US7088845B2 - Region extraction in vector images - Google Patents

Region extraction in vector images Download PDF

Info

Publication number
US7088845B2
US7088845B2 US10/767,135 US76713504A US7088845B2 US 7088845 B2 US7088845 B2 US 7088845B2 US 76713504 A US76713504 A US 76713504A US 7088845 B2 US7088845 B2 US 7088845B2
Authority
US
United States
Prior art keywords
region
regions
image
growing
points
Prior art date
Legal status (The legal status is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the status listed.)
Expired - Fee Related, expires
Application number
US10/767,135
Other versions
US20040189863A1 (en
Inventor
Chuang Gu
Ming-Chieh Lee
Current Assignee (The listed assignees may be inaccurate. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation or warranty as to the accuracy of the list.)
Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC
Original Assignee
Microsoft Corp
Priority date (The priority date is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the date listed.)
Filing date
Publication date
Application filed by Microsoft Corp filed Critical Microsoft Corp
Priority to US10/767,135 priority Critical patent/US7088845B2/en
Publication of US20040189863A1 publication Critical patent/US20040189863A1/en
Priority to US11/171,448 priority patent/US7162055B2/en
Application granted granted Critical
Publication of US7088845B2 publication Critical patent/US7088845B2/en
Assigned to MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC reassignment MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS). Assignors: MICROSOFT CORPORATION
Adjusted expiration legal-status Critical
Expired - Fee Related legal-status Critical Current

Links

Images

Classifications

    • HELECTRICITY
    • H04ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
    • H04NPICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
    • H04N19/00Methods or arrangements for coding, decoding, compressing or decompressing digital video signals
    • H04N19/80Details of filtering operations specially adapted for video compression, e.g. for pixel interpolation
    • GPHYSICS
    • G06COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
    • G06TIMAGE DATA PROCESSING OR GENERATION, IN GENERAL
    • G06T7/00Image analysis
    • G06T7/10Segmentation; Edge detection
    • G06T7/11Region-based segmentation
    • GPHYSICS
    • G06COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
    • G06TIMAGE DATA PROCESSING OR GENERATION, IN GENERAL
    • G06T7/00Image analysis
    • G06T7/10Segmentation; Edge detection
    • G06T7/174Segmentation; Edge detection involving the use of two or more images
    • GPHYSICS
    • G06COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
    • G06TIMAGE DATA PROCESSING OR GENERATION, IN GENERAL
    • G06T7/00Image analysis
    • G06T7/20Analysis of motion
    • G06T7/215Motion-based segmentation
    • GPHYSICS
    • G06COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
    • G06TIMAGE DATA PROCESSING OR GENERATION, IN GENERAL
    • G06T7/00Image analysis
    • G06T7/20Analysis of motion
    • G06T7/246Analysis of motion using feature-based methods, e.g. the tracking of corners or segments
    • GPHYSICS
    • G06COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
    • G06VIMAGE OR VIDEO RECOGNITION OR UNDERSTANDING
    • G06V10/00Arrangements for image or video recognition or understanding
    • G06V10/20Image preprocessing
    • G06V10/24Aligning, centring, orientation detection or correction of the image
    • HELECTRICITY
    • H04ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
    • H04NPICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
    • H04N19/00Methods or arrangements for coding, decoding, compressing or decompressing digital video signals
    • H04N19/50Methods or arrangements for coding, decoding, compressing or decompressing digital video signals using predictive coding
    • H04N19/503Methods or arrangements for coding, decoding, compressing or decompressing digital video signals using predictive coding involving temporal prediction
    • H04N19/51Motion estimation or motion compensation
    • H04N19/537Motion estimation other than block-based
    • H04N19/543Motion estimation other than block-based using regions

Definitions

  • the invention relates to analysis of video data, and more, specifically relates to a method for tracking meaningful entities called semantic objects as they move through a sequence of vector images such as a video sequence.
  • a semantic video object represents a meaningful entity in a digital video clip, e.g., a ball, car, plane, building, cell, eye, lip, hand, head, body, etc.
  • the term “semantic” in this context means that the viewer of the video clip attaches some semantic meaning to the object.
  • each of the objects listed above represent some real-world entity, and the viewer associates the portions of the screen corresponding to these entities with the meaningful objects that they depict.
  • Semantic video objects can be very useful in a variety of new digital video applications including content-based video communication, multimedia signal processing, digital video libraries, digital movie studios, and computer vision and pattern recognition. In order to use semantic video objects in these applications, object segmentation and tracking methods are needed to identify the objects in each of the video frames.
  • the process of segmenting a video object refers generally to automated or semi-automated methods for extracting objects of interest in image data. Extracting a semantic video object from a video clip has remained a challenging task for many years.
  • the semantic objects may include disconnected components, different colors, and multiple rigid/non-rigid motions. While semantic objects are easy for viewers to discern, the wide variety of shapes, colors and motion of semantic objects make it difficult to automate this process on a computer. Satisfactory results can be achieved by having the user draw an initial outline of a semantic object in an initial frame, and then use the outline to compute pixels that are part of the object in that frame.
  • Object tracking is the process of computing an object's position as it moves from frame to frame.
  • the object tracking method In order to deal with more general semantic video objects, the object tracking method must be able to deal with objects that contain disconnected components and multiple non-rigid motions. While a great deal of research has focused on object tracking, existing methods still do not accurately track objects having multiple components with non-rigid motion.
  • FIGS. 1A–C provide simple examples of semantic video objects to show the difficulties associated with object tracking.
  • FIG. 1A shows a semantic video object of a building 100 containing multiple colors 102 , 104 . Methods that assume that objects have a homogenous color do not track these types of objects well.
  • FIG. 1B shows the same building object of FIG. 1A , except that it is split into disconnected components 106 , 108 by a tree 110 that partially occludes it. Methods that assume that objects are formed of connected groups of pixels do not track these types of disconnected objects well.
  • FIG. 1C illustrates a simple semantic video object depicting a person 112 . Even this simple object has multiple components 114 , 116 , 118 , 120 with different motion. Methods that assume an object has homogenous motion do not track these types of objects well.
  • a semantic video object may have disconnected components, multiple colors, multiple motions, and arbitrary shapes.
  • a tracking method In addition to dealing with all of these attributes of general semantic video objects, a tracking method must also achieve an acceptable level of accuracy to avoid propagating errors from frame to frame. Since object tracking methods typically partition each frame based on a previous frame's partition, errors in the previous frame tend to get propagated to the next frame. Unless the tracking method computes an object's boundary with pixel-wise accuracy, it will likely propagate significant errors to the next frame. As result, the object boundaries computed for each frame are not precise, and the objects can be lost after several frames of tracking.
  • the invention provides a method for tracking semantic objects in vector image sequences.
  • the invention is particularly well suited for tracking semantic video objects in digital video clips, but can also be used for a variety of other vector image sequences. While the method is implemented in software program modules, it can also be implemented in digital hardware logic or in a combination of hardware and software components.
  • the method tracks semantic objects in an image sequence by segmenting regions from a frame and then projecting the segmented regions into a target frame where a semantic object boundary or boundaries are already known.
  • the projected regions are classified as forming part of a semantic object by determining the extent to which they overlap with a semantic object in the target frame. For example, in a typical application, the tracking method repeats for each frame, classifying regions by projecting them into the previous frame in which the semantic object boundaries are previously computed.
  • the tracking method assumes that semantic objects are already identified in the initial frame.
  • a semantic object segmentation method may be used to identify the boundary of the semantic object in an initial frame.
  • the tracking method operates on the segmentation results of the previous frame and the current and previous image frames. For each frame in a sequence, a region extractor segments homogenous regions from the frame. A motion estimator then performs region based matching for each of these regions to identify the most closely matching region of image values in the previous frame. Using the motion parameters derived in this step, the segmented regions are projected into the previous frame where the semantic boundary is already computed. A region classifier then classifies the regions as being part of semantic object in the current frame based on the extent to which the projected regions overlap semantic objects in the previous frame.
  • the above approach is particularly suited for operating on an ordered sequence of frames.
  • the segmentation results of the previous frame are used to classify the regions extracted from the next frame.
  • it can also be used to track semantic objects between an input frame and any other target frame where the semantic object boundaries are known.
  • this spatial segmentation method is a region growing process where image points are added to the region as long as the difference between the minimum and maximum image values for points in the region are below a threshold.
  • This method is implemented as a sequential segmentation method that starts with a first region at one starting point, and sequentially forms regions one after the other using the same test to identify homogenous groups of image points.
  • Implementations of the method include other features to improve the accuracy of the tracking method.
  • the tracking method preferably includes region-based preprocessing to remove image errors without blurring object boundaries, and post-processing on the computed semantic object boundaries.
  • the computed boundary of an object is formed from the individual regions that are classified as being associated with the same semantic object in the target frame.
  • a post processor smooths the boundary of a semantic object using a majority operator filter. This filter examines neighboring image points for each point in a frame and determines the semantic object that contains the maximum number of these points. It then assigns the point to the semantic object containing the maximum number of points.
  • FIGS. 1A–C are examples illustrating different types of semantic objects to illustrate the difficulty of tracking general semantic objects.
  • FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating a semantic object tracking system.
  • FIGS. 3A–D are diagrams illustrating examples of partition images and a method for representing partition images in a region adjacency graph.
  • FIG. 4 is a flow diagram illustrating an implementation of a semantic object tracking system.
  • FIG. 5 is a block diagram of a computer system that serves as an operating environment for an implementation of the invention.
  • This method assumes that the semantic object for the initial frame (I-frame) is already known.
  • the goal of the method is to find the semantic partition image in the current frame based on the information from the previous semantic partition image and the previous frame.
  • the boundaries of the partition image are located at the physical edges of a meaningful entity.
  • a physical edge is the position between two connected points where the image value (e.g., a color intensity triplet, gray scale value, motion vector, etc.) at these points are significantly different.
  • the tracking method solves the semantic video object tracking method using a divide-and-conquer strategy.
  • the tracking method finds the physical edges in the current frame. This is realized using a segmentation method, and in particular, a spatial segmentation method. The goal of this segmentation method is to extract all the connected regions with homogeneous image valuies (e.g., color intensity triplets, gray scale values, etc.) in the current frame.
  • the tracking method classifies each extracted region in the current frame, to determine which object in the previous frame it belongs to. This classification analysis is a region-based classification problem. Once the region-based classification problem is solved, the semantic video object in the current frame has been extracted and tracked.
  • FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating the semantic video object tracking system.
  • the tracking system comprises the following five modules:
  • FIG. 2 uses the following notation:
  • the tracking method assumes that the semantic video object for the initial frame I 0 is already known.
  • a segmentation process determines an initial partition defining boundaries of semantic objects in the frame.
  • the I-segmentation block 210 represents a program for segmenting a semantic video object. This program takes the initial frame I 0 and computes the boundary of a semantic object. Typically, this boundary is represented as a binary or alpha mask.
  • a variety of segmentation approaches may be used to find the semantic video object(s) for the first frame.
  • one approach is to provide a drawing tool that enables a user to draw a border around the inside and outside of a semantic video object's boundary. This user-drawn boundary then serves as a starting point for an automated method for snapping the computed boundary to the edge of the semantic video object.
  • the I-segmentation process 210 computes a partition image, e.g., a mask, for each one.
  • the post-processing block 212 used in the initial frame is a process for smoothing the initial partition image and for removing errors. This process is the same or similar to post-processing used to process the result of tracking the semantic video object in subsequent frames, I 1 , I 2 .
  • the input for the tracking process starting in the next frame (I 1 ) includes the previous frame I 0 and the previous frames segmentation results T 0 .
  • the dashed lines 216 separate the processing for each frame. Dashed line 214 separates the processing for the initial frame and the next frame, while dashed line 216 separates the processing for subsequent frames during the semantic video object tracking frames.
  • Semantic video object tracking begins with frame I 1 .
  • the first step is to simplify the input frame I 1 .
  • simplification block 220 represents a region-preprocessing step used to simplify the input frame I 1 before further analysis.
  • the input data contains noise that may adversely effect the tracking results.
  • Region-preprocessing removes noise and ensures that further semantic object tracking is carried out on the cleaned input data.
  • the simplification block 220 provides a cleaned result that enables a segmentation method to extract regions of connected pixels more accurately.
  • the segmentation block 222 represents a spatial segmentation method for extracting connected regions with homogeneous image values in the input frame.
  • the tracking system determines whether a connected region originates from the previous semantic video object.
  • the boundary of the semantic video object in the current frame is constructed from the boundaries of these connected regions. Therefore, the spatial segmentation should provide a dependable segmentation result for the current frame, i.e., no region should be missing and no region should contain any area that does not belong to it.
  • the first step in determining whether a connected region belongs to the semantic video object is matching the connected region with a corresponding region in the previous frame.
  • a motion estimation block 224 takes the connected regions and the current and previous frames as input and finds a corresponding region in the previous frame that most closely matches each region in the current frame. For each region, the motion estimation block 224 provides the motion information to predict where each region in the current frame comes from in the previous frame. This motion information indicates the location of each region's ancestor in the previous frame. Later, this location information is used to decide whether the current region belongs to the semantic video object or not.
  • the tracking system classifies each region as to whether it originates from the semantic video object.
  • the classification block 226 identifies the semantic object in the previous frame that each region is likely to originate from.
  • the classification process uses the motion information for each region to predict where the region came from in the previous frame. By comparing the predicted region with the segmentation result of the previous frame, the classification process determines the extent to which the predicted region overlaps a semantic object or objects already computed for the previous frame.
  • the result of the classification process associates each region in the current frame either with a semantic video object or the background.
  • a tracked semantic video object in the current frame comprises the union of all the regions linked with a corresponding semantic video object in the previous frame.
  • post processing block 228 fine tunes the obtained boundaries of each semantic video object in the current image. This process removes errors introduced in the classification procedure and smoothes the boundaries to improve the visual effect.
  • FIG. 2 shows an example of the processing steps repeated for frame I 2 .
  • Blocks 240 – 248 represent the tracking system steps applied to the next frame.
  • the tracking system shown in FIG. 2 performs backward tracking.
  • the backward region-based classification approach has the advantage that the final semantic video object boundaries will always be positioned in the physical edges of a meaningful entity as a result of the spatial segmentation. Also, since each region is treated individually, the tracking system can easily deal with disconnected semantic video objects or non-rigid motions.
  • multi-dimensional refers to the spatial coordinates of each discrete image point, as well as the image value at that point.
  • a temporal sequence of image data can be referred to as a “vector image sequence” because it consists of successive frames of multi-dimensional data arrays.
  • the dimension, n refers to the number of dimensions in the spatial coordinates of an image sample.
  • the dimension, m refers to the number of dimensions of the image value located at the spatial coordinates of the image sample.
  • P (P ⁇ S) be a path which is consisted of m points: p 1 , . . . , p m .
  • Path P is connected if and only if p k and p k+1 (k ⁇ 1, . . . , m ⁇ 1 ⁇ ) are connected points.
  • R (R ⁇ S) be a region.
  • a point p (p ⁇ R) is neighborhood of region R if and only if ⁇ another point q (q ⁇ R) p and q are connected points.
  • R (R ⁇ S) be a region.
  • a partition image P is a mapping P: S ⁇ T where T is a complete ordered lattice.
  • P(x) P(y) ⁇ .
  • a connected partition image is a partition image P where ⁇ x ⁇ S, R p (x) is always connected.
  • the other is called “the finest partition” where each point in S is an individual region: ⁇ x, y ⁇ S, x ⁇ y R p (x) ⁇ R p (y).
  • Two regions R 1 and R 2 are adjacent if and only if ⁇ x, y (x ⁇ R 1 and y ⁇ R 2 ) x and y are connected points.
  • P be a partition image on a multidimensional set S.
  • the region adjacency graph (RAG) consists of a set of vertices V and an edge set L.
  • V ⁇ v 1 , . . . , v k ⁇ where each v i is associated to the correspondent region R i .
  • the edge set L is ⁇ e 1 , . . . , e t ⁇ , L ⁇ V ⁇ circle around (X) ⁇ V where each e i is built between two vertices if the two correspondent regions are adjacent regions.
  • FIGS. 3A–C illustrate examples of different types of partition images
  • FIG. 3D shows an example of a region adjacency graph based on these partition images.
  • S is a set of two-dimensional images.
  • the white areas 300 – 308 , hatched areas 310 – 314 , and spotted area 316 represent different regions in a two-dimensional image frame.
  • FIG. 3A shows a partition image having two disconnected regions (white areas 300 and 302 ).
  • FIG. 3B shows a connected partition image having two connected regions (white area 304 and hatched area 312 ).
  • FIG. 3C shows a finer partition image as compared to FIG. 3A in that hatched area 310 of FIG.
  • FIG. 3A comprises two regions: hatched area 314 and spotted area 316 .
  • FIG. 3D shows the corresponding region adjacency graph of the partition image in FIG. 3C .
  • the vertices 320 , 322 , 324 , 326 in the graph correspond to regions 306 , 314 , 316 , and 308 , respectively.
  • the edges 330 , 332 , 334 , 336 , and 338 connect vertices of adjacent regions.
  • a vector image sequence is a sequence of mapping I t : S ⁇ L, where S is a n-dimensional set and t is in the time domain.
  • vector image sequences are illustrated above in Table 1. These vector image sequences can be obtained either from a series of sensors, e.g. color images, or from a computed parameter space, e.g. dense motion fields. Although the physical meaning of the input signals varies from case to case, all of them can be universally regarded as vector image sequences.
  • I be a vector image on a n-dimensional set S.
  • I be a vector image on a n-dimensional set S.
  • I t ⁇ 1 be a vector image on a n-dimensional set S and P t ⁇ 1 be the corresponding semantic partition image at time t ⁇ 1.
  • FIG. 4 is a block diagram illustrating the principal components in the implementation described below.
  • Each of the blocks in FIG. 4 represent program modules that implement parts of the object tracking method outlined above. Depending on a variety of considerations, such as cost, performance and design complexity, each of these modules may be implemented in digital logic circuitry as well.
  • the tracking method shown in FIG. 4 takes as input the segmentation result of a previous frame at time t ⁇ 1 and the current vector image I t .
  • the tracking method computes a partition image for each frame in the sequence.
  • the result of the segmentation is a mask identifying the position of each semantic object in each frame.
  • Each mask has an object number identifying which object it corresponds to in each frame.
  • Each point p represents a pixel in a two-dimensional image.
  • the number of points in the set S corresponds to the number of pixels in each image frame.
  • the lattice at each pixel comprises three sample values, corresponding to Red, Green and Blue intensity values.
  • the result of the tracking method is a series of two-dimensional masks identifying the position of all of the pixels that form part of the corresponding semantic video object for each frame.
  • the implementation shown in FIG. 4 begins processing for a frame by simplifying the input vector image.
  • a simplifying filter 420 cleans the entire input vector image before further processing.
  • the vector median of a point p is defined as the median of each component within the structure element E:
  • the tracking process After filtering the vector input image, the tracking process extracts regions from the current image. To accomplish this, the tracking process employs a spatial segmentation method 422 that takes the current image and identifies regions of connected points having “homogenous” image values., These connected regions are the regions of points that are used in region based motion estimation 424 and region-based classification 426 .
  • the spatial segmentation method should provide an accurate spatial partition image for the current frame.
  • the current implementation of the tracking method uses a novel and fast spatial segmentation method, called LabelMinMax.
  • LabelMinMax This particular approach grows one region at a time in a sequential fashion. This approach is unlike other parallel region growing processes that require all seeds to be specified before region growing proceeds from any seed.
  • the sequential region growing method extracts one region after another. It allows more flexible treatment of each region and reduces the overall computational complexity.
  • the region homogeneity is controlled by the difference between the maximum and minimum values in a region.
  • the maximum and minimum values (MaxL and MinL) in a region R are defined as:
  • LabelMinMax a good choice for spatial segmentation
  • other region growing methods use different homogeneity criteria and models of“homogenous” regions to determine whether to add points to a homogenous region.
  • These criteria include, for example, an intensity threshold, where points are added to a region so long as the difference between intensity of each new point and a neighboring point in the region does not exceed a threshold.
  • the homogeneity criteria may also be defined in terms of a mathematical function that describe how the intensity values of points in a region are allowed to vary and yet still be considered part of the connected region.
  • the process of region-based motion estimation 424 matches the image values in regions identified by the segmentation process with corresponding image values in the previous frame to estimate how the region has moved from the previous frame.
  • I t ⁇ 1 be the previous vector image on a n-dimensional set S at time t ⁇ 1 and let I t be the current vector image on the same set S at time t.
  • the tracking process proceeds to classify each region as belonging to exactly one of the semantic video objects in the previous frame.
  • the tracking process solves this region-based classification problem using region-based motion estimation and compensation.
  • a motion estimation procedure is carried out to find where this region originates in the previous frame I t ⁇ 1 .
  • the current implementation uses a translational motion model for the motion estimation procedure.
  • the motion estimation procedure computes a motion vector V i for region R i that minimizes the prediction error (PE) on that region:
  • PE min V i ⁇ ⁇ ⁇ p ⁇ R i ⁇ ⁇ ⁇ I t ⁇ ( p ) - I t - 1 ⁇ ( p + V i ) ⁇ ⁇
  • an affine or perspective motion model can be used to model the motion between a region in the current vector image and a corresponding region in the previous vector image.
  • the affine and perspective motion models use a geometric transform (e.g., an affine or perspective transform) to define the motion of region between one frame and another.
  • the transform is expressed in terms of motion coefficients that may be computed by finding motion vectors for several points in a region and then solving a simultaneous set of equations using the motion vectors at the selected points to compute the coefficients.
  • Another way is to select an initial set of motion coefficients and then iterate until the error (e.g., a sum of absolute differences or a sum of squared differences) is below a threshold.
  • the region based classification process 426 modifies the location of each region using its motion information to determine the region's estimated position in the previous frame. It then compares this estimated position with the boundaries of semantic video objects in the previous frame (S t ) to determine which semantic video object that it most likely forms a part of.
  • the tracking process fulfils this task by finding a semantic video object O t ⁇ 1,j (j ⁇ 1, 2, . . . , m ⁇ ) for each region R i in the current frame.
  • the region classifier 426 uses backward motion compensation to warp each region R i in the current frame towards the previous frame. It warps the region by applying the motion information for the region to the points in the region.
  • the warped region R′ i should fall onto one of the semantic video objects in the previous frame: ti ⁇ j,j ⁇ 1,2 , . . . , m ⁇ and R′ i ⁇ O t ⁇ 1j .
  • the tracking method assigns the semantic video object O t ⁇ 1j to this region R i .
  • the tracking result in the current frame is the semantic partition image P t .
  • the goal of the region post-processing process is to remove those errors and at the same time to smooth the boundaries of each semantic video object in the current frame.
  • the partition image is a special image that is different from the traditional ones. The value in each point of this partition image only indicates the location of a semantic video object. Therefore, all the traditional linear or non-linear filters for signal processing are not generally suitable for this special post-processing.
  • FIG. 5 and the following discussion are intended to provide a brief, general description of a suitable computing environment in which the invention may be implemented.
  • the tracking system described above is implemented in computer-executable instructions organized in program modules.
  • the program modules include the routines, programs, objects, components, and data structures that perform the tasks and implement the data types described above.
  • FIG. 5 shows a typical configuration of a desktop computer
  • the invention may be implemented in other computer system configurations, including hand-held devices, multiprocessor systems, microprocessor-based or programmable consumer electronics, minicomputers, mainframe computers, and the like.
  • the invention may also be used in distributed computing environments where tasks are performed by remote processing devices that are linked through a communications network.
  • program modules may be located in both local and remote memory storage devices.
  • FIG. 5 illustrates an example of a computer system that serves as an operating environment for the invention.
  • the computer system includes a personal computer 520 , including a processing unit 521 , a system memory 522 , and a system bus 523 that interconnects various system components including the system memory to the processing unit 521 .
  • the system bus may comprise any of several types of bus structures including a memory bus or memory controller, a peripheral bus, and a local bus using a bus architecture such as PCI, VESA, Microchannel (MCA), ISA and EISA, to name a few.
  • the system memory includes read only memory (ROM) 524 and random access memory (RAM) 525 .
  • ROM read only memory
  • RAM random access memory
  • a basic input/output system 526 (BIOS), containing the basic routines that help to transfer information between elements within the personal computer 520 , such as during start-up, is stored in ROM 524 .
  • the personal computer 520 further includes a hard disk drive 527 , a magnetic disk drive 528 , e.g., to read from or write to a removable disk 529 , and an optical disk drive 530 , e.g., for reading a CD-ROM disk 531 or to read from or write to other optical media.
  • the hard disk drive 527 , magnetic disk drive 528 , and optical disk drive 530 are connected to the system bus 523 by a hard disk drive interface 532 , a magnetic disk drive interface 533 , and an optical drive interface 534 , respectively.
  • the drives and their associated computer-readable media provide nonvolatile storage of data, data structures, computer-executable instructions (program code such as dynamic link libraries, and executable files), etc. for the personal computer 520 .
  • program code such as dynamic link libraries, and executable files
  • computer-readable media refers to a hard disk, a removable magnetic disk and a CD, it can also include other types of media that are readable by a computer, such as magnetic cassettes, flash memory cards, digital video disks, Bernoulli cartridges, and the like.
  • a number of program modules may be stored in the drives and RAM 525 , including an operating system 535 , one or more application programs 536 , other program modules 537 , and program data 538 .
  • a user may enter commands and information into the personal computer 520 through a keyboard 540 and pointing device, such as a mouse 542 .
  • Other input devices may include a microphone, joystick, game pad, satellite dish, scanner, or the like.
  • These and other input devices are often connected to the processing unit 521 through a serial port interface 546 that is coupled to the system bus, but may-be connected by other interfaces, such as a parallel port, game port or a universal serial bus (USB).
  • a monitor 547 or other type of display device is also connected to the system bus 523 via an interface, such as a display controller or video adapter 548 .
  • personal computers typically include other peripheral output devices (not shown), such as speakers and printers.
  • the personal computer 520 may operate in a networked environment using logical connections to one or more remote computers, such as a remote computer 549 .
  • the remote computer 549 may be a server, a router, a peer device or other common network node, and typically includes many or all of the elements described relative to the personal computer 520 , although only a memory storage device 50 has been illustrated in FIG. 5 .
  • the logical connections depicted in FIG. 5 include a local area network (LAN) 551 and a wide area network (WAN) 552 .
  • LAN local area network
  • WAN wide area network
  • Such networking environments are commonplace in offices, enterprise-wide computer networks, intranets and the Internet.
  • the personal computer 520 When used in a LAN networking environment, the personal computer 520 is connected to the local network 551 through a network interface or adapter 553 . When used in a WAN networking environment, the personal computer 520 typically includes a modem 554 or other means for establishing communications over the wide area network 552 , such as the Internet.
  • the modem 554 which may be internal or external, is connected to the system bus 523 via the serial port interface 546 .
  • program modules depicted relative to the personal computer 520 may be stored in the remote memory storage device. The network connections shown are merely examples and other means of establishing a communications link between the computers may be used.
  • the invention provides a semantic object tracking method and system that identifies homogenous regions in a vector image frame and then classifies these regions as being part of a semantic object.
  • the classification method of the implementation described above is referred to as “backward tracking” because it projects a segmented region into a previous frame where the semantic object boundaries are previously computed.
  • this tracking method also generally applies to applications where the segmented regions are projected into frames where the semantic video object boundaries are known, even if these frames are not previous frames in an ordered sequence.
  • the “backward” tracking scheme described above extends to applications where classification is not necessarily limited to a previous frame, but instead to frames where the semantic object boundaries are known or previously computed.
  • the frame for which semantic video objects have already been identified is more generally referred to as the reference frame.
  • the tracking of the semantic objects for the current frame are computed by classifying segmented regions in the current frame with respect to the semantic object boundaries in the reference frame.
  • the object tracking method applies generally to vector image sequences.
  • it is not limited to 2D video sequences or sequences where the image values represent intensity values.
  • region segmentation stage identified criteria that are particularly useful but not required for all implementations of semantic video object tracking.
  • other segmentation techniques may be used to identify connected regions of points.
  • the definition of a region's homogeneity may differ depending on the type of image values (e.g., motion vectors, color intensities, etc.) and the application.
  • the motion model used to perform motion estimation and compensation can vary as well. Though computationally more complex, motion vectors may be computed for each individual point in a region. Alternatively, a single motion vector may be computed for each region, such as in the translational model described above.
  • a region based matching method should be used to find matching regions in the frame of interest. In region based matching, the boundary or mask of the region in the current frame is used to exclude points located outside the region from the process of minimizing the error between the predicted region and corresponding region in the target frame. This type of approach is described in co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/657,274, by Ming-Chieh Lee, entitled Polygon Block Matching Method, which is hereby incorporated by reference.

Abstract

A semantic object tracking method tracks general semantic objects with multiple non-rigid motion, disconnected components and multiple colors throughout a vector image sequence. The method accurately tracks these general semantic objects by spatially segmenting image regions from a current frame and then classifying these regions as to which semantic object they originated from in the previous frame. To classify each region, the method perform a region based motion estimation between each spatially segmented region and the previous frame to computed the position of a predicted region in the previous frame. The method then classifies each region in the current frame as being part of a semantic object based on which semantic object in the previous frame contains the most overlapping points of the predicted region. Using this method, each region in the current image is tracked to one semantic object from the previous frame, with no gaps or overlaps. The method propagates few or no errors because it projects regions into a frame where the semantic object boundaries are previously computed rather than trying to project and adjust a boundary in a frame where the object's boundary is unknown.

Description

This is a continuation of application Ser. No. 09/151,368, filed Sep. 10, 1998, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,711,278.
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to analysis of video data, and more, specifically relates to a method for tracking meaningful entities called semantic objects as they move through a sequence of vector images such as a video sequence.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
A semantic video object represents a meaningful entity in a digital video clip, e.g., a ball, car, plane, building, cell, eye, lip, hand, head, body, etc. The term “semantic” in this context means that the viewer of the video clip attaches some semantic meaning to the object. For example, each of the objects listed above represent some real-world entity, and the viewer associates the portions of the screen corresponding to these entities with the meaningful objects that they depict. Semantic video objects can be very useful in a variety of new digital video applications including content-based video communication, multimedia signal processing, digital video libraries, digital movie studios, and computer vision and pattern recognition. In order to use semantic video objects in these applications, object segmentation and tracking methods are needed to identify the objects in each of the video frames.
The process of segmenting a video object refers generally to automated or semi-automated methods for extracting objects of interest in image data. Extracting a semantic video object from a video clip has remained a challenging task for many years. In a typical video clip, the semantic objects may include disconnected components, different colors, and multiple rigid/non-rigid motions. While semantic objects are easy for viewers to discern, the wide variety of shapes, colors and motion of semantic objects make it difficult to automate this process on a computer. Satisfactory results can be achieved by having the user draw an initial outline of a semantic object in an initial frame, and then use the outline to compute pixels that are part of the object in that frame. In each successive frame, motion estimation can be used to predict the initial boundary of an object based on the segmented object from the previous frame. This semi-automatic object segmentation and tracking method is described in co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/054,280, by Chuang Gu, and Ming Chieh Lee, entitled Semantic Video Object Segmentation and Tracking, which is hereby incorporated by reference.
Object tracking is the process of computing an object's position as it moves from frame to frame. In order to deal with more general semantic video objects, the object tracking method must be able to deal with objects that contain disconnected components and multiple non-rigid motions. While a great deal of research has focused on object tracking, existing methods still do not accurately track objects having multiple components with non-rigid motion.
Some tracking techniques use homogeneous gray scale/color as a criterion to track regions. See F. Meyer and P. Bouthemy, “Region-based tracking in an image sequence”, ECCV'92, pp. 476–484, Santa Margherita, Italy, May 1992; Ph. Salembier, L. Torres, F. Meyer and C. Gu, “Region-based video coding using mathematical morphology”, Proceeding of the IEEE, Vol. 83, No. 6, pp. 843–857, June 1995; F. Marques and Cristina Molina, “Object tracking for content-based functionalities”, VCIP'97, Vol. 3024, No. 1, pp. 190–199, San Jose, February, 1997; and C. Toklu, A. Tekalp and A. Erdem, “Simultaneous alpha map generation and 2-D mesh tracking for multimedia applications”, ICIP'97, Vol. 1, page 113–116, October, 1997, Santa Barbara.
Some employ homogenous motion information to track moving objects. See for example, J. Wang and E. Adelson, “Representing moving images with layers”, IEEE Trans. on Image Processing, Vol. 3, No. 5. pp. 625–638, September 1994 and N. Brady and N. O'Connor, “Object detection and tracking using an em-based motion estimation and segmentation framework”, ICIP'96, Vol. 1, pp. 925–928, Lausanne, Switzerland, September 1996.
Others use a combination of spatial and temporal criteria to track objects. See M. J. Black, “Combining intensity and motion for incremental segmentation and tracking over long image sequences”, ECCV'92, pp. 485–493, Santa Margherita, Italy, May 1992; C. Gu, T. Ebrahimi and M. Kunt, “Morphological moving object segmentation and tracking for content-based video coding”, Multimedia communication and Video Coding, pp. 233–240, Plenum Press, New York, 1995; F. Moscheni, F. Dufaux and M. Kunt, “Object tracking based on temporal and spatial information”, in Proc. ICASSP'96, Vol. 4, pp. 1914–1917, Atlanta, Ga., May 1996; and C. Gu and M. C. Lee, “Semantic video object segmentation and tracking using mathematical morphology and perspective motion model”, ICIP'97, Vol. II, pages 514–517, October 1997, Santa Barbara.
Most of these techniques employ a forward tracking mechanism that projects the previous regions/objects to the current frame and somehow assembles/adjusts the projected regions/objects in the current frame. The major drawback of these forward techniques lies in the difficulty of either assembling/adjusting the projected regions in the current frame or dealing with multiple non-rigid motions. In many of these cases, uncertain holes may appear or the resulting boundaries may become distorted.
FIGS. 1A–C provide simple examples of semantic video objects to show the difficulties associated with object tracking. FIG. 1A shows a semantic video object of a building 100 containing multiple colors 102, 104. Methods that assume that objects have a homogenous color do not track these types of objects well. FIG. 1B shows the same building object of FIG. 1A, except that it is split into disconnected components 106, 108 by a tree 110 that partially occludes it. Methods that assume that objects are formed of connected groups of pixels do not track these types of disconnected objects well. Finally, FIG. 1C illustrates a simple semantic video object depicting a person 112. Even this simple object has multiple components 114, 116, 118, 120 with different motion. Methods that assume an object has homogenous motion do not track these types of objects well. In general, a semantic video object may have disconnected components, multiple colors, multiple motions, and arbitrary shapes.
In addition to dealing with all of these attributes of general semantic video objects, a tracking method must also achieve an acceptable level of accuracy to avoid propagating errors from frame to frame. Since object tracking methods typically partition each frame based on a previous frame's partition, errors in the previous frame tend to get propagated to the next frame. Unless the tracking method computes an object's boundary with pixel-wise accuracy, it will likely propagate significant errors to the next frame. As result, the object boundaries computed for each frame are not precise, and the objects can be lost after several frames of tracking.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The invention provides a method for tracking semantic objects in vector image sequences. The invention is particularly well suited for tracking semantic video objects in digital video clips, but can also be used for a variety of other vector image sequences. While the method is implemented in software program modules, it can also be implemented in digital hardware logic or in a combination of hardware and software components.
The method tracks semantic objects in an image sequence by segmenting regions from a frame and then projecting the segmented regions into a target frame where a semantic object boundary or boundaries are already known. The projected regions are classified as forming part of a semantic object by determining the extent to which they overlap with a semantic object in the target frame. For example, in a typical application, the tracking method repeats for each frame, classifying regions by projecting them into the previous frame in which the semantic object boundaries are previously computed.
The tracking method assumes that semantic objects are already identified in the initial frame. To get the initial boundaries of a semantic object, a semantic object segmentation method may be used to identify the boundary of the semantic object in an initial frame.
After the initial frame, the tracking method operates on the segmentation results of the previous frame and the current and previous image frames. For each frame in a sequence, a region extractor segments homogenous regions from the frame. A motion estimator then performs region based matching for each of these regions to identify the most closely matching region of image values in the previous frame. Using the motion parameters derived in this step, the segmented regions are projected into the previous frame where the semantic boundary is already computed. A region classifier then classifies the regions as being part of semantic object in the current frame based on the extent to which the projected regions overlap semantic objects in the previous frame.
The above approach is particularly suited for operating on an ordered sequence of frames. In these types of applications, the segmentation results of the previous frame are used to classify the regions extracted from the next frame. However, it can also be used to track semantic objects between an input frame and any other target frame where the semantic object boundaries are known.
One implementation of the method employs a unique spatial segmentation method. In particular, this spatial segmentation method is a region growing process where image points are added to the region as long as the difference between the minimum and maximum image values for points in the region are below a threshold. This method is implemented as a sequential segmentation method that starts with a first region at one starting point, and sequentially forms regions one after the other using the same test to identify homogenous groups of image points.
Implementations of the method include other features to improve the accuracy of the tracking method. For example, the tracking method preferably includes region-based preprocessing to remove image errors without blurring object boundaries, and post-processing on the computed semantic object boundaries. The computed boundary of an object is formed from the individual regions that are classified as being associated with the same semantic object in the target frame. In one implementation, a post processor smooths the boundary of a semantic object using a majority operator filter. This filter examines neighboring image points for each point in a frame and determines the semantic object that contains the maximum number of these points. It then assigns the point to the semantic object containing the maximum number of points.
Further advantages and features of the invention will become apparent in the following detailed description and accompanying drawings.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
FIGS. 1A–C are examples illustrating different types of semantic objects to illustrate the difficulty of tracking general semantic objects.
FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating a semantic object tracking system.
FIGS. 3A–D are diagrams illustrating examples of partition images and a method for representing partition images in a region adjacency graph.
FIG. 4 is a flow diagram illustrating an implementation of a semantic object tracking system.
FIG. 5 is a block diagram of a computer system that serves as an operating environment for an implementation of the invention.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
Overview of a Semantic Object Tracking System
The following sections describe a semantic object tracking method. This method assumes that the semantic object for the initial frame (I-frame) is already known. The goal of the method is to find the semantic partition image in the current frame based on the information from the previous semantic partition image and the previous frame.
One fundamental observation about the semantic partition image is that the boundaries of the partition image are located at the physical edges of a meaningful entity. A physical edge is the position between two connected points where the image value (e.g., a color intensity triplet, gray scale value, motion vector, etc.) at these points are significantly different. Taking advantage of this observation, the tracking method solves the semantic video object tracking method using a divide-and-conquer strategy.
First, the tracking method finds the physical edges in the current frame. This is realized using a segmentation method, and in particular, a spatial segmentation method. The goal of this segmentation method is to extract all the connected regions with homogeneous image valuies (e.g., color intensity triplets, gray scale values, etc.) in the current frame. Second, the tracking method classifies each extracted region in the current frame, to determine which object in the previous frame it belongs to. This classification analysis is a region-based classification problem. Once the region-based classification problem is solved, the semantic video object in the current frame has been extracted and tracked.
FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating the semantic video object tracking system. The tracking system comprises the following five modules:
    • 1. region pre-processing 220;
    • 2. region extraction 222;
    • 3. region based motion estimation 224;
    • 4. region-based classification 226; and
    • 5. region post-processing 228.
FIG. 2 uses the following notation:
    • Ii—input image for frame i;
    • Si—spatial segmentation results for frame i;
    • Mi—motion parameters for frame i; and
    • Ti—tracking results for frame i.
The tracking method assumes that the semantic video object for the initial frame I0 is already known. Starting with an initial frame, a segmentation process determines an initial partition defining boundaries of semantic objects in the frame. In FIG. 2, the I-segmentation block 210 represents a program for segmenting a semantic video object. This program takes the initial frame I0 and computes the boundary of a semantic object. Typically, this boundary is represented as a binary or alpha mask. A variety of segmentation approaches may be used to find the semantic video object(s) for the first frame.
As described in co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/054,280 by Gu and Lee, one approach is to provide a drawing tool that enables a user to draw a border around the inside and outside of a semantic video object's boundary. This user-drawn boundary then serves as a starting point for an automated method for snapping the computed boundary to the edge of the semantic video object. In applications involving more than one semantic video object of interest, the I-segmentation process 210 computes a partition image, e.g., a mask, for each one.
The post-processing block 212 used in the initial frame is a process for smoothing the initial partition image and for removing errors. This process is the same or similar to post-processing used to process the result of tracking the semantic video object in subsequent frames, I1, I2.
The input for the tracking process starting in the next frame (I1) includes the previous frame I0 and the previous frames segmentation results T0. The dashed lines 216 separate the processing for each frame. Dashed line 214 separates the processing for the initial frame and the next frame, while dashed line 216 separates the processing for subsequent frames during the semantic video object tracking frames.
Semantic video object tracking begins with frame I1. The first step is to simplify the input frame I1. In FIG. 2, simplification block 220 represents a region-preprocessing step used to simplify the input frame I1 before further analysis. In many cases, the input data contains noise that may adversely effect the tracking results. Region-preprocessing removes noise and ensures that further semantic object tracking is carried out on the cleaned input data.
The simplification block 220 provides a cleaned result that enables a segmentation method to extract regions of connected pixels more accurately. In FIG. 2, the segmentation block 222 represents a spatial segmentation method for extracting connected regions with homogeneous image values in the input frame.
For each region, the tracking system determines whether a connected region originates from the previous semantic video object. When the tracking phase is complete for the current frame, the boundary of the semantic video object in the current frame is constructed from the boundaries of these connected regions. Therefore, the spatial segmentation should provide a dependable segmentation result for the current frame, i.e., no region should be missing and no region should contain any area that does not belong to it.
The first step in determining whether a connected region belongs to the semantic video object is matching the connected region with a corresponding region in the previous frame. As shown in FIG. 2, a motion estimation block 224 takes the connected regions and the current and previous frames as input and finds a corresponding region in the previous frame that most closely matches each region in the current frame. For each region, the motion estimation block 224 provides the motion information to predict where each region in the current frame comes from in the previous frame. This motion information indicates the location of each region's ancestor in the previous frame. Later, this location information is used to decide whether the current region belongs to the semantic video object or not.
Next, the tracking system classifies each region as to whether it originates from the semantic video object. In FIG. 2, the classification block 226 identifies the semantic object in the previous frame that each region is likely to originate from. The classification process uses the motion information for each region to predict where the region came from in the previous frame. By comparing the predicted region with the segmentation result of the previous frame, the classification process determines the extent to which the predicted region overlaps a semantic object or objects already computed for the previous frame. The result of the classification process associates each region in the current frame either with a semantic video object or the background. A tracked semantic video object in the current frame comprises the union of all the regions linked with a corresponding semantic video object in the previous frame.
Finally, the tracking system post-processes the linked regions for each object. In FIG. 2, post processing block 228 fine tunes the obtained boundaries of each semantic video object in the current image. This process removes errors introduced in the classification procedure and smoothes the boundaries to improve the visual effect.
For each subsequent frame, the tracking system repeats the same steps in an automated fashion using the previous frame, the tracking result of the previous frame and the current frame as input. FIG. 2 shows an example of the processing steps repeated for frame I2. Blocks 240248 represent the tracking system steps applied to the next frame.
Unlike other region and object tracking systems that employ various forward tracking mechanisms, the tracking system shown in FIG. 2 performs backward tracking. The backward region-based classification approach has the advantage that the final semantic video object boundaries will always be positioned in the physical edges of a meaningful entity as a result of the spatial segmentation. Also, since each region is treated individually, the tracking system can easily deal with disconnected semantic video objects or non-rigid motions.
Definitions
Before describing an implementation of the tracking system, it is helpful to begin with a series of definitions used throughout the rest of the description. These definitions help illustrate that the tracking method applies not only to sequences of color video frames, but to other temporal sequences of multi-dimensional image data. In this context, “multi-dimensional” refers to the spatial coordinates of each discrete image point, as well as the image value at that point. A temporal sequence of image data can be referred to as a “vector image sequence” because it consists of successive frames of multi-dimensional data arrays. As an example of a vector image sequence, consider the examples listed in Table 1 below:
TABLE 1
Several types of input data as a vector image sequences
Vector image Dimensions Explanation
It: (x, y) → Y n = 2, m = 1 gray-tone image sequence
It: (x, y) → (Vx, Vy) n = 2, m = 2 dense motion vector sequence
It: (x, y) → (R, G, B) n = 2, m = 3 color image sequence
It: (x, y, z) → Y n = 3, m = 1 gray-tone volume image
sequence
It: (x, y, z) → (Vx, Vy) n = 3, m = 2 dense motion vector volume
sequence
It: (x, y, z) → (R, G, B) n = 3, m = 3 color volume image sequence
The dimension, n, refers to the number of dimensions in the spatial coordinates of an image sample. The dimension, m, refers to the number of dimensions of the image value located at the spatial coordinates of the image sample. For example, the spatial coordinates of a color volume image sequence include three spatial coordinates defining the location of an image sample in three-dimensional space, so n=3. Each sample in the color volume image has three color values, R, G, and B, so m=3.
The following definitions provide a foundation for describing the tracking system in the context of vector image.sequences using set and graph theory notation.
Definition 1 Connected Points:
Let S be a n-dimensional set: a point pεS
Figure US07088845-20060808-P00001
p=(p1, . . . pn). ∀p, qεS, p and q are connected if and only if their distance Dp,q is equal to one:
D p , q = k = 1 n | p k - qk | = 1
Definition 2 Connected Path:
Let P (PS) be a path which is consisted of m points: p1, . . . , pm. Path P is connected if and only if pk and pk+1 (kε{1, . . . , m−1}) are connected points.
Definition 3 Neighborhood Point:
Let R (RS) be a region. A point p (p∉R) is neighborhood of region R if and only if ∃ another point q (qεR) p and q are connected points.
Definition 4 Connected Region:
Let R (RS) be a region. R is a connected region if and only if ∀x, yεR, ∃ a connected path P (P={p1, . . . , Pm}) where p1=x and pn=y.
Definition 5 Partition Image:
A partition image P is a mapping P: S→T where T is a complete ordered lattice. Let Rp(x) be the region containing a point x: Rp(x)=∪yεS {y |P(x)=P(y)}. A partition image should satisfy the following condition: ∀x, yεS, Rp(x)=Rp(y) or Rp(x)∩Rp(y)=Ø; ∪xεS Rp(x)=S.
Definition 6 Connected Partition Image:
A connected partition image is a partition image P where ∀xεS, Rp(x) is always connected.
Definition 7 Fine Partition:
If a partition image P is finer than another partition image P′ on S, this means ∀xεS, Rp(x)Rp′(x).
Definition 8 Coarse Partition:
If a partition image P is coarser than another partition image P′ on S, this means ∀xεS, Rp(x)Rp′(x).
There are two extreme cases for the partition image. One is “the coarsest partition” which covers the whole S: ∀x, yεS, Rp(x)=Rp(y). The other is called “the finest partition” where each point in S is an individual region: ∀x, yεS, x≠y
Figure US07088845-20060808-P00001
Rp(x)≠Rp(y).
Definition 9 Adjacent Regions:
Two regions R1 and R2 are adjacent if and only if ∃x, y (xεR1 and yεR2) x and y are connected points.
Definition 10 Region Adjacency Graph:
Let P be a partition image on a multidimensional set S. There are k regions (R1, . . . , Rk) in P where S=∪Ri and if i≠j
Figure US07088845-20060808-P00001
Ri∩Rj=Ø. The region adjacency graph (RAG) consists of a set of vertices V and an edge set L. Let V={v1, . . . , vk} where each vi is associated to the correspondent region Ri. The edge set L is {e1, . . . , et}, LV{circle around (X)}V where each ei is built between two vertices if the two correspondent regions are adjacent regions.
FIGS. 3A–C illustrate examples of different types of partition images, and FIG. 3D shows an example of a region adjacency graph based on these partition images. In these examples, S is a set of two-dimensional images. The white areas 300308, hatched areas 310314, and spotted area 316 represent different regions in a two-dimensional image frame. FIG. 3A shows a partition image having two disconnected regions (white areas 300 and 302). FIG. 3B shows a connected partition image having two connected regions (white area 304 and hatched area 312). FIG. 3C shows a finer partition image as compared to FIG. 3A in that hatched area 310 of FIG. 3A comprises two regions: hatched area 314 and spotted area 316. FIG. 3D shows the corresponding region adjacency graph of the partition image in FIG. 3C. The vertices 320, 322, 324, 326 in the graph correspond to regions 306, 314, 316, and 308, respectively. The edges 330, 332, 334, 336, and 338 connect vertices of adjacent regions.
Definition 11 Vector Image Sequence:
Given m (m≧1) totally ordered complete lattices L1, . . . Lm of product L (L=L1{circle around (X)}L2{circle around (X)} . . . {circle around (X)}Lm), a vector image sequence is a sequence of mapping It: S→L, where S is a n-dimensional set and t is in the time domain.
Several types of vector image sequences are illustrated above in Table 1. These vector image sequences can be obtained either from a series of sensors, e.g. color images, or from a computed parameter space, e.g. dense motion fields. Although the physical meaning of the input signals varies from case to case, all of them can be universally regarded as vector image sequences.
Definition 12 Semantic Video Objects:
Let I be a vector image on a n-dimensional set S. Let P be a semantic partition image of I. S=∪i=1, . . . , m Oi. Each Oi indicates the location of a semantic video object.
Definition 13 Semantic Video Object Segmentation:
Let I be a vector image on a n-dimensional set S. Semantic video object segmentation is to find the object number m and the location of each object Oi, i=1, . . . m, where S=∪i=1, . . . , m Oi.
Definition 14 Semantic Video Object Tracking:
Let It−1 be a vector image on a n-dimensional set S and Pt−1 be the corresponding semantic partition image at time t−1. S=∪i=1, . . . , m Ot−1,i. Each Ot−1,i (i=1, . . . , m) is a semantic video object at time t−1. Semantic video object tracking in It is defined as finding the semantic video object Ot,i at time t, i=1, . . . , m. ∀xεOt−1,i and ∀yεOt,i: Pt−1 (x)=Pt (y).
EXAMPLE IMPLEMENTATION
The following sections describe a specific implementation of a semantic video object tracking method in more detail. FIG. 4 is a block diagram illustrating the principal components in the implementation described below. Each of the blocks in FIG. 4 represent program modules that implement parts of the object tracking method outlined above. Depending on a variety of considerations, such as cost, performance and design complexity, each of these modules may be implemented in digital logic circuitry as well.
Using the notation defined above, the tracking method shown in FIG. 4 takes as input the segmentation result of a previous frame at time t−1 and the current vector image It. The current vector image is defined in m (m≧1) totally ordered complete lattices L1, . . . , Lm of product L (see Definition 11) on a n-dimensional set S: ∀p, pεS, It(p)={L1(p), L2(p), . . . , Lm(p)}.
Using this information, the tracking method computes a partition image for each frame in the sequence. The result of the segmentation is a mask identifying the position of each semantic object in each frame. Each mask has an object number identifying which object it corresponds to in each frame.
For example, consider a color image sequence as defined in Table 1. Each point p represents a pixel in a two-dimensional image. The number of points in the set S corresponds to the number of pixels in each image frame. The lattice at each pixel comprises three sample values, corresponding to Red, Green and Blue intensity values. The result of the tracking method is a series of two-dimensional masks identifying the position of all of the pixels that form part of the corresponding semantic video object for each frame.
Region Pre-Processing
The implementation shown in FIG. 4 begins processing for a frame by simplifying the input vector image. In particular, a simplifying filter 420 cleans the entire input vector image before further processing. In designing this pre-processing stage, it is preferable to select a simplifying method that does not introduce spurious data. For instance, a low pass filter may clean and smooth an image, but may also make the boundaries of a video object distorted. Therefore, it is preferable to select a method that simplifies the input vector image while preserving the boundary position of the semantic video object.
Many non-linear filters, such as median filters or morphological filters, are candidates for this task. The current implementation uses a vector median filter, Median(•), for the simplification of the input vector image.
The vector median filter computes the median image value(s) of neighboring points for each point in the input image and replaces the image value at the point with the median value(s). For every point p in the n-dimensional set S, a structure element E is defined around it which contains all the connected points (see Definition 1 about connected points):
E=∪qεS{Dp,q=1}
The vector median of a point p is defined as the median of each component within the structure element E:
Median ( I 1 ( p ) ) = { median q E { L 1 ( q ) } , , median q E { L m ( q ) } }
By using such a vector median filter, small variation of the vector image It can be removed while the boundaries of video objects are well preserved under the special design of the structure element E. As a result, the tracking process can more effectively identify boundaries of semantic video objects.
Region Extraction
After filtering the vector input image, the tracking process extracts regions from the current image. To accomplish this, the tracking process employs a spatial segmentation method 422 that takes the current image and identifies regions of connected points having “homogenous” image values., These connected regions are the regions of points that are used in region based motion estimation 424 and region-based classification 426.
In implementing a region extraction stage, there are three primary issues to address. First, the concept of “homogeneous” needs to be consolidated. Second, the total number of regions should be found. Third, the location of each region must be fixed. The literature relating to segmentation of vector image data describes a variety of spatial segmentation methods. Most common spatial segmentation methods use:
    • polynomial functions to define the homogeneity of the regions;
    • deterministic methods to find the number of regions; and/or
    • boundary adjustment to finalize the location of all the regions.
These methods may provide satisfactory results in some applications, but they do not guarantee an accurate result for a wide variety of semantic video objects with non-rigid motion, disconnected regions and multiple colors. The required accuracy of the spatial segmentation method is quite high because the accuracy with which the semantic objects can be classified is dependent upon the accuracy of the regions. Preferably, after the segmentation stage, no region of the semantic object should be missing, and no region should contain an area that does not belong to it. Since the boundaries of the semantic video objects in the current frame are defined as a subset of all the boundaries of these connected regions, their accuracy directly impacts the accuracy of the result of the tracking process. If the boundaries are incorrect, then the boundary of the resulting semantic video object will be incorrect as well. Therefore, the spatial segmentation method should provide an accurate spatial partition image for the current frame.
The current implementation of the tracking method uses a novel and fast spatial segmentation method, called LabelMinMax. This particular approach grows one region at a time in a sequential fashion. This approach is unlike other parallel region growing processes that require all seeds to be specified before region growing proceeds from any seed. The sequential region growing method extracts one region after another. It allows more flexible treatment of each region and reduces the overall computational complexity.
The region homogeneity is controlled by the difference between the maximum and minimum values in a region. Assume that the input vector image It is defined in m (m≧1) totally ordered complete lattices L1, . . . , Lm of product L (see Definition 11):
p, pεS, I t(p)={L 1(p), L 2(p), . . . , L m(p)}.
The maximum and minimum values (MaxL and MinL) in a region R are defined as:
Max L = { max p R { L 1 ( p ) } , , max p R { L m ( p ) } } ; Min L = { min p R { L 1 ( p ) } , , min p R { L m ( p ) } } ;
If the difference between MaxL and MinL is smaller than a threshold (H={h1, h2, . . . , hm}) that region is homogeneous:
Homogeneity : i , 1 i m , ( max p R { L i ( p ) } - min p R { L i ( p ) } ) h i
The LabelMinMax method labels each region one after another. It starts with a point p in the n-dimensional set S. Assume region R is the current region that LabelMinMax is operating on. At the beginning, it only contains the point p: R={p}. Next, LabelMinMax checks all of the neighborhood points of region R (see Definition 3) to see whether region R is still homogeneous if a neighborhood point q is inserted into it. A point q is added into region R if the insertion does not change the homogeneity of that region. The point q should be deleted from set S when it is added into region R. Gradually, region R expands to all the homogeneous territories where no more neighborhood points can be added. Then, a new region is constructed with a point from the remaining points in S. This process continues until there are no more points left in S. The whole process can be clearly described by the following pseudo-code:
LabelMinMax:
NumberOfRegion = 0;
While (S ≠ empty) {
  Take a point p from S: R = {p}; S = S
Figure US07088845-20060808-P00002
{p};
  NumberOfRegion = NumberOfRegion + 1;
  For all the points q in S {
    if (q is in neighborhood of R) {
      if ((R + {q}) is homogeneous) {
        R = R + {q};
        S = S
Figure US07088845-20060808-P00002
{q};
      }
    }
  }
  Assign a label to region R, e.g. NumberOfRegion.
}

LabelMinMax has a number of advantages, including:
    • MaxL and MinL present a more precise description about a region's homogeneity compared to other criteria;
    • The definition of homogeneity gives a more rigid control over the homogeneity of a region which leads to accurate boundaries;
    • LabelMinMax provides reliable spatial segmentation results;
    • LabelMinMax possesses much lower computational complexity than many other approaches.
While these advantages make LabelMinMax a good choice for spatial segmentation, it also possible to use alternative segmentation methods to identify connected regions. For example, other region growing methods use different homogeneity criteria and models of“homogenous” regions to determine whether to add points to a homogenous region. These criteria include, for example, an intensity threshold, where points are added to a region so long as the difference between intensity of each new point and a neighboring point in the region does not exceed a threshold. The homogeneity criteria may also be defined in terms of a mathematical function that describe how the intensity values of points in a region are allowed to vary and yet still be considered part of the connected region.
Region Based Motion Estimation
The process of region-based motion estimation 424 matches the image values in regions identified by the segmentation process with corresponding image values in the previous frame to estimate how the region has moved from the previous frame. To illustrate this process, consider the following example. Let It−1 be the previous vector image on a n-dimensional set S at time t−1 and let It be the current vector image on the same set S at time t. The region extraction procedure has extracted N homogeneous regions Ri(i=1, 2, . . . , N) in the current frame It:
S=∪i=1, . . . , NRi.
Now, the tracking process proceeds to classify each region as belonging to exactly one of the semantic video objects in the previous frame. The tracking process solves this region-based classification problem using region-based motion estimation and compensation. For each extracted region Ri in the current frame It, a motion estimation procedure is carried out to find where this region originates in the previous frame It−1, While a number of motion models may be used, the current implementation uses a translational motion model for the motion estimation procedure. In this model, the motion estimation procedure computes a motion vector Vi for region Ri that minimizes the prediction error (PE) on that region:
PE = min V i { p R i I t ( p ) - I t - 1 ( p + V i ) }
where ∥•∥ denotes the sum of absolute difference between two vectors and Vi≦Vmax (Vmax is the maximum search range). This motion vector Vi is assigned to region Ri indicating its trajectory location in the previous frame It−1.
Other motion models may be used as well. For example, an affine or perspective motion model can be used to model the motion between a region in the current vector image and a corresponding region in the previous vector image. The affine and perspective motion models use a geometric transform (e.g., an affine or perspective transform) to define the motion of region between one frame and another. The transform is expressed in terms of motion coefficients that may be computed by finding motion vectors for several points in a region and then solving a simultaneous set of equations using the motion vectors at the selected points to compute the coefficients. Another way is to select an initial set of motion coefficients and then iterate until the error (e.g., a sum of absolute differences or a sum of squared differences) is below a threshold.
Region Based Classification
The region based classification process 426 modifies the location of each region using its motion information to determine the region's estimated position in the previous frame. It then compares this estimated position with the boundaries of semantic video objects in the previous frame (St) to determine which semantic video object that it most likely forms a part of.
To illustrate, consider the following example. Let It−1 and It be the previous and current vector images on a n-dimensional set S and Pt−1 be the corresponding semantic partition image at time t−1:
S=∪i=1, . . . , m Ot−1,i.
Each Ot−1,i (i=1, . . . , m) indicates the location of a semantic video object at time t−1. Assume that there are N total extracted regions R1 (i=1, 2, . . . , N), each having an associated motion vector Vi (i=1, 2, . . . , N) in the current frame. Now, the tracking method needs to construct the current semantic partition image Pt at the time t.
The tracking process fulfils this task by finding a semantic video object Ot−1,j (jε{1, 2, . . . , m}) for each region Ri in the current frame.
Since the motion information for each region Ri is already available at this stage, the region classifier 426 uses backward motion compensation to warp each region Ri in the current frame towards the previous frame. It warps the region by applying the motion information for the region to the points in the region. Let's assume the warped region in the previous frame is R′i:
R′ i=∪pεRi {p+V i}.
Ideally, the warped region R′i should fall onto one of the semantic video objects in the previous frame:
ti ∃j,j ε{1,2, . . . , m} and R′i Ot−1j.
If this is the case, then the tracking method assigns the semantic video object Ot−1j to this region Ri. However, in reality, because of the potentially ambiguous results from the motion estimation process, R′i may overlap with more than one semantic video object in the previous frame, i.e.
R′i
Figure US07088845-20060808-P00001
Ot−1j, j=1, 2, . . . , m.
The current implementation uses majority criteria M for the region-based classification. For each region Ri in the current frame, if the majority part of the warped region R′i comes from a semantic video object Ot−1j (jε{1, 2, . . . , m}) in the previous frame, this region is assigned to that semantic video object Ot−1j:
pεR i and ∀qεO t−1j , P t,(p)=P t−1(q).
More specifically, the semantic video object Ot−1j that has the majority overlapped area (MOA) with R′i is found as:
M : MOA = max j { p R i N j ( p + V i ) , j = 1 , , m } ; N j ( p + V i ) = { 1 ( p + V i ) O t - 1 , j 0 ( p + V i ) O t - 1 , j
Piece by piece, the complete semantic video objects Ot,j in the current frame are constructed using this region-based classification procedure for all the regions Ri(i=1, 2, . . , N) in the current frame. Assume a point qεOt−1j,
O t,j=∪pεS {p|P t(p)=P t−1(q)}, j=1, 2, . . . , m.
According to the design of this region-based classification process, there will not be any holes/gaps or overlaps between different semantic video objects in the current frame:
i=1, . . . , m O t,i=∪i=1, . . . , N R i=∪i=1, . . . , m O t−1,i =S.
i, jε{1, . . . , m}, i≠j
Figure US07088845-20060808-P00001
O t,i ∩O t,j=Ø;
This is an advantage of the tracking system compared to tracking systems that track objects into frames where the semantic video object boundaries are not determined. For example, in forward tracking systems, object tracking proceeds into subsequent frames where precise boundaries are not known. The boundaries are then adjusted to fit an unknown boundary based on some predetermined criteria that models a boundary condition.
Region Post-Processing
Let's assume the tracking result in the current frame is the semantic partition image Pt. For various reasons, there might be some errors in the region-based classification procedure. The goal of the region post-processing process is to remove those errors and at the same time to smooth the boundaries of each semantic video object in the current frame. Interestingly, the partition image is a special image that is different from the traditional ones. The value in each point of this partition image only indicates the location of a semantic video object. Therefore, all the traditional linear or non-linear filters for signal processing are not generally suitable for this special post-processing.
The implementation uses a majority operator M(•) to fulfil this task. For every point p in the n-dimensional set S, a structure element E is defined around it which contains all the connected points (see 1 about connected points):
E=∪qεS{Dp,q=1}
First, the majority operator M(•) finds a semantic video object Ot,j which has the maximal overlapped area (MOA) with the structure element E:
MOA = max j { q E N j ( q ) , j = 1 , , m } ; N j ( q ) = { 1 q O t , j 0 q O t , j
Second, the majority operator M(•) assigns the value of that semantic video object Ot,j to the point p:
Let qεO t,j , P t(p)=M(p)=P t(q).
Because of the adoption of the majority criteria, very small areas (which most likely are errors) may be removed while the boundaries of each semantic video object are smoothed.
Brief Overview of a Computer System
FIG. 5 and the following discussion are intended to provide a brief, general description of a suitable computing environment in which the invention may be implemented. Although the invention or aspects of it may be implemented in a hardware device, the tracking system described above is implemented in computer-executable instructions organized in program modules. The program modules include the routines, programs, objects, components, and data structures that perform the tasks and implement the data types described above.
While FIG. 5 shows a typical configuration of a desktop computer, the invention may be implemented in other computer system configurations, including hand-held devices, multiprocessor systems, microprocessor-based or programmable consumer electronics, minicomputers, mainframe computers, and the like. The invention may also be used in distributed computing environments where tasks are performed by remote processing devices that are linked through a communications network. In a distributed computing environment, program modules may be located in both local and remote memory storage devices.
FIG. 5 illustrates an example of a computer system that serves as an operating environment for the invention. The computer system includes a personal computer 520, including a processing unit 521, a system memory 522, and a system bus 523 that interconnects various system components including the system memory to the processing unit 521. The system bus may comprise any of several types of bus structures including a memory bus or memory controller, a peripheral bus, and a local bus using a bus architecture such as PCI, VESA, Microchannel (MCA), ISA and EISA, to name a few. The system memory includes read only memory (ROM) 524 and random access memory (RAM) 525. A basic input/output system 526 (BIOS), containing the basic routines that help to transfer information between elements within the personal computer 520, such as during start-up, is stored in ROM 524. The personal computer 520 further includes a hard disk drive 527, a magnetic disk drive 528, e.g., to read from or write to a removable disk 529, and an optical disk drive 530, e.g., for reading a CD-ROM disk 531 or to read from or write to other optical media. The hard disk drive 527, magnetic disk drive 528, and optical disk drive 530 are connected to the system bus 523 by a hard disk drive interface 532, a magnetic disk drive interface 533, and an optical drive interface 534, respectively. The drives and their associated computer-readable media provide nonvolatile storage of data, data structures, computer-executable instructions (program code such as dynamic link libraries, and executable files), etc. for the personal computer 520. Although the description of computer-readable media above refers to a hard disk, a removable magnetic disk and a CD, it can also include other types of media that are readable by a computer, such as magnetic cassettes, flash memory cards, digital video disks, Bernoulli cartridges, and the like.
A number of program modules may be stored in the drives and RAM 525, including an operating system 535, one or more application programs 536, other program modules 537, and program data 538. A user may enter commands and information into the personal computer 520 through a keyboard 540 and pointing device, such as a mouse 542. Other input devices (not shown) may include a microphone, joystick, game pad, satellite dish, scanner, or the like. These and other input devices are often connected to the processing unit 521 through a serial port interface 546 that is coupled to the system bus, but may-be connected by other interfaces, such as a parallel port, game port or a universal serial bus (USB). A monitor 547 or other type of display device is also connected to the system bus 523 via an interface, such as a display controller or video adapter 548. In addition to the monitor, personal computers typically include other peripheral output devices (not shown), such as speakers and printers.
The personal computer 520 may operate in a networked environment using logical connections to one or more remote computers, such as a remote computer 549. The remote computer 549 may be a server, a router, a peer device or other common network node, and typically includes many or all of the elements described relative to the personal computer 520, although only a memory storage device 50 has been illustrated in FIG. 5. The logical connections depicted in FIG. 5 include a local area network (LAN) 551 and a wide area network (WAN) 552. Such networking environments are commonplace in offices, enterprise-wide computer networks, intranets and the Internet.
When used in a LAN networking environment, the personal computer 520 is connected to the local network 551 through a network interface or adapter 553. When used in a WAN networking environment, the personal computer 520 typically includes a modem 554 or other means for establishing communications over the wide area network 552, such as the Internet. The modem 554, which may be internal or external, is connected to the system bus 523 via the serial port interface 546. In a networked environment, program modules depicted relative to the personal computer 520, or portions thereof, may be stored in the remote memory storage device. The network connections shown are merely examples and other means of establishing a communications link between the computers may be used.
CONCLUSION
While the invention is described in the context of specific implementation details, it is not limited to these specific details. The invention provides a semantic object tracking method and system that identifies homogenous regions in a vector image frame and then classifies these regions as being part of a semantic object. The classification method of the implementation described above is referred to as “backward tracking” because it projects a segmented region into a previous frame where the semantic object boundaries are previously computed.
Note that this tracking method also generally applies to applications where the segmented regions are projected into frames where the semantic video object boundaries are known, even if these frames are not previous frames in an ordered sequence. Thus, the “backward” tracking scheme described above extends to applications where classification is not necessarily limited to a previous frame, but instead to frames where the semantic object boundaries are known or previously computed. The frame for which semantic video objects have already been identified is more generally referred to as the reference frame. The tracking of the semantic objects for the current frame are computed by classifying segmented regions in the current frame with respect to the semantic object boundaries in the reference frame.
As noted above, the object tracking method applies generally to vector image sequences. Thus, it is not limited to 2D video sequences or sequences where the image values represent intensity values.
The description of the region segmentation stage identified criteria that are particularly useful but not required for all implementations of semantic video object tracking. As noted, other segmentation techniques may be used to identify connected regions of points. The definition of a region's homogeneity may differ depending on the type of image values (e.g., motion vectors, color intensities, etc.) and the application.
The motion model used to perform motion estimation and compensation can vary as well. Though computationally more complex, motion vectors may be computed for each individual point in a region. Alternatively, a single motion vector may be computed for each region, such as in the translational model described above. Preferably, a region based matching method should be used to find matching regions in the frame of interest. In region based matching, the boundary or mask of the region in the current frame is used to exclude points located outside the region from the process of minimizing the error between the predicted region and corresponding region in the target frame. This type of approach is described in co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/657,274, by Ming-Chieh Lee, entitled Polygon Block Matching Method, which is hereby incorporated by reference.
In view of the many possible implementations of the invention, the implementation described above is only an example of the invention and should not be taken as a limitation on the scope of the invention. Rather, the scope of the invention is defined by the following claims. We therefore claim as our invention all that comes within the scope and spirit of these claims.

Claims (29)

1. A method comprising:
providing a vector image, wherein the vector image comprises plural m-dimensional points, and wherein m is greater than or equal to 1; and
for each of one or more regions in the vector image, growing the region from a starting point of the plural points, wherein the growing includes adding to the region one or more neighboring points that satisfy a homogeneity criterion for the region and are not already part of any region in the vector image, wherein the growing the region ends when there are no neighboring points satisfying the homogeneity criterion for the region, and wherein the growing occurs sequentially on a region-after-region basis until each of the plural points is part of one of the one or more regions.
2. The method of claim 1 wherein the plural points are organized as m ordered complete lattices for the vector image.
3. The method of claim 1 wherein the growing occurs without initially specifying starting points for all of the one or more regions.
4. The method of claim 1 wherein for each of the m dimensions the homogeneity criterion constrains the difference between a maximum point value in the region and a minimum point value in the region.
5. The method of claim 1 wherein the homogeneity criterion constrains the difference between two adjacent points.
6. The method of claim 1 wherein the homogeneity criterion is based upon a mathematical function controlling variation in intensity values of points in the region.
7. The method of claim 1 further comprising filtering the vector image before the growing to simplify the vector image.
8. The method of claim 7 wherein the filtering includes applying a median filter to remove noise while preserving boundary details.
9. The method of claim 1 wherein m is greater than or equal to 2.
10. The method of claim 1 wherein m is greater than or equal to 3.
11. The method of claim 1 wherein the vector image is a video image, and wherein the plural points are plural pixels.
12. The method of claim 11 further comprising tracking a video object into the video image using the one or more regions.
13. The method of claim 12 further comprising repeating the providing, the growing, and the tracking for each of one or more subsequent video images.
14. The method of claim 12 further comprising tracking a second video object into the video image using the one or more regions.
15. A computer-readable medium having stored therein computer-executable instructions for causing a computer system programmed thereby to perform the method of claim 1.
16. A method comprising:
providing a vector image, wherein the vector image comprises plural m-dimensional points, and wherein m is greater than or equal to 1; and
for each of one or more regions in the vector image, growing the region by adding to the region one or more neighboring points that satisfy a homogeneity criterion for the region and are not already part of any region in the vector image, wherein for each of the m dimensions the homogeneity criterion constrains the difference between a maximum point value in the region and a minimum point value in the region, and wherein the growing the region ends when there are no neighboring points satisfying the homogeneity criterion for the region.
17. The method of claim 16 wherein the growing occurs sequentially until each of the plural points is part of one of the one or more regions, and wherein the growing occurs without initially specifying starting points for all of the one or more regions.
18. The method of claim 16 wherein the plural points are organized as m ordered complete lattices for the vector image.
19. The method of claim 16 further comprising median filtering the vector image before the growing to remove noise while preserving boundary details.
20. The method of claim 16 wherein m is greater than or equal to 2.
21. The method of claim 16 wherein m is greater than or equal to 3.
22. The method of claim 16 wherein the vector image is a video image, and wherein the plural points are plural pixels.
23. A computer-readable medium having stored therein computer-executable instructions for causing a computer system programmed thereby to perform the method of claim 16.
24. A method comprising:
providing a video image, wherein the video image comprises plural pixels;
growing a first region in the video image starting from a first pixel of the plural pixels, wherein the growing includes adding to the first region one or more neighboring pixels that satisfy a homogeneity criterion for the first region and are not already part of any region in the video image, and wherein the growing the first region ends when there are no neighboring pixels satisfying the homogeneity criterion for the first region; and
after the growing the first region ends, sequentially repeating the growing as necessary for each of one or more other regions in the video image until each of the plural pixels of the video image is part of the first region or one of the one or more other regions in the video image, wherein the growing occurs without initially specifying starting pixels for all of the regions.
25. The method of claim 24 further comprising filtering the video image before the growing to simplify the video image.
26. The method of claim 24 wherein the homogeneity criterion constrains the difference between a maximum pixel value and a minimum pixel value in a given region.
27. The method of claim 24 wherein each of the plural pixels consists of one intensity value.
28. The method of claim 24 wherein each of the plural pixels consists of three intensity values.
29. A computer-readable medium having stored therein computer-executable instructions for causing a computer system programmed thereby to perform the method of claim 24.
US10/767,135 1998-09-10 2004-01-28 Region extraction in vector images Expired - Fee Related US7088845B2 (en)

Priority Applications (2)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
US10/767,135 US7088845B2 (en) 1998-09-10 2004-01-28 Region extraction in vector images
US11/171,448 US7162055B2 (en) 1998-09-10 2005-06-29 Tracking semantic objects in vector image sequences

Applications Claiming Priority (2)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
US09/151,368 US6711278B1 (en) 1998-09-10 1998-09-10 Tracking semantic objects in vector image sequences
US10/767,135 US7088845B2 (en) 1998-09-10 2004-01-28 Region extraction in vector images

Related Parent Applications (1)

Application Number Title Priority Date Filing Date
US09/151,368 Continuation US6711278B1 (en) 1998-09-10 1998-09-10 Tracking semantic objects in vector image sequences

Related Child Applications (1)

Application Number Title Priority Date Filing Date
US11/171,448 Continuation US7162055B2 (en) 1998-09-10 2005-06-29 Tracking semantic objects in vector image sequences

Publications (2)

Publication Number Publication Date
US20040189863A1 US20040189863A1 (en) 2004-09-30
US7088845B2 true US7088845B2 (en) 2006-08-08

Family

ID=22538452

Family Applications (3)

Application Number Title Priority Date Filing Date
US09/151,368 Expired - Lifetime US6711278B1 (en) 1998-09-10 1998-09-10 Tracking semantic objects in vector image sequences
US10/767,135 Expired - Fee Related US7088845B2 (en) 1998-09-10 2004-01-28 Region extraction in vector images
US11/171,448 Expired - Fee Related US7162055B2 (en) 1998-09-10 2005-06-29 Tracking semantic objects in vector image sequences

Family Applications Before (1)

Application Number Title Priority Date Filing Date
US09/151,368 Expired - Lifetime US6711278B1 (en) 1998-09-10 1998-09-10 Tracking semantic objects in vector image sequences

Family Applications After (1)

Application Number Title Priority Date Filing Date
US11/171,448 Expired - Fee Related US7162055B2 (en) 1998-09-10 2005-06-29 Tracking semantic objects in vector image sequences

Country Status (6)

Country Link
US (3) US6711278B1 (en)
EP (2) EP1112661B1 (en)
JP (1) JP4074062B2 (en)
AT (1) ATE286337T1 (en)
DE (1) DE69922973T2 (en)
WO (1) WO2000016563A1 (en)

Cited By (30)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US20060148426A1 (en) * 2004-12-31 2006-07-06 Meng-Hsi Chuang Mobile communication device capable of changing its user interface
US20070206028A1 (en) * 2004-12-23 2007-09-06 Apple Inc. Manipulating text and graphic appearance
US20080089605A1 (en) * 2006-10-11 2008-04-17 Richard Haven Contrast-based technique to reduce artifacts in wavelength-encoded images
US20080232712A1 (en) * 2007-03-23 2008-09-25 Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. Image composer for composing an image by extracting a partial region not common to plural images
US20080310742A1 (en) * 2007-06-15 2008-12-18 Physical Optics Corporation Apparatus and method employing pre-ATR-based real-time compression and video frame segmentation
US20090116728A1 (en) * 2007-11-07 2009-05-07 Agrawal Amit K Method and System for Locating and Picking Objects Using Active Illumination
US20090214078A1 (en) * 2008-02-26 2009-08-27 Chia-Chen Kuo Method for Handling Static Text and Logos in Stabilized Images
US20100002929A1 (en) * 2004-05-13 2010-01-07 The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. Image-based methods for measuring global nuclear patterns as epigenetic markers of cell differentiation
US20100073458A1 (en) * 2007-01-23 2010-03-25 Pace Charles P Systems and methods for providing personal video services
US20100086062A1 (en) * 2007-01-23 2010-04-08 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Object archival systems and methods
US20100200660A1 (en) * 2009-02-11 2010-08-12 Cognex Corporation System and method for capturing and detecting symbology features and parameters
US20100232646A1 (en) * 2009-02-26 2010-09-16 Nikon Corporation Subject tracking apparatus, imaging apparatus and subject tracking method
US20100296572A1 (en) * 2007-12-11 2010-11-25 Kumar Ramaswamy Methods and systems for transcoding within the distributiion chain
US20110182352A1 (en) * 2005-03-31 2011-07-28 Pace Charles P Feature-Based Video Compression
US20110188728A1 (en) * 2009-12-17 2011-08-04 The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. Methods of generating trophectoderm and neurectoderm from human embryonic stem cells
US20110211726A1 (en) * 2007-11-30 2011-09-01 Cognex Corporation System and method for processing image data relative to a focus of attention within the overall image
US8179370B1 (en) 2010-02-09 2012-05-15 Google Inc. Proximity based keystroke resolution
US8718363B2 (en) 2008-01-16 2014-05-06 The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. Systems and methods for analyzing image data using adaptive neighborhooding
US8737703B2 (en) 2008-01-16 2014-05-27 The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. Systems and methods for detecting retinal abnormalities
US8751872B2 (en) 2011-05-27 2014-06-10 Microsoft Corporation Separation of error information from error propagation information
US8830182B1 (en) 2010-02-09 2014-09-09 Google Inc. Keystroke resolution
US8902971B2 (en) 2004-07-30 2014-12-02 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Video compression repository and model reuse
US8908766B2 (en) 2005-03-31 2014-12-09 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Computer method and apparatus for processing image data
US9532069B2 (en) 2004-07-30 2016-12-27 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Video compression repository and model reuse
US9578345B2 (en) 2005-03-31 2017-02-21 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Model-based video encoding and decoding
US9621917B2 (en) 2014-03-10 2017-04-11 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Continuous block tracking for temporal prediction in video encoding
US9743078B2 (en) 2004-07-30 2017-08-22 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Standards-compliant model-based video encoding and decoding
US10091507B2 (en) 2014-03-10 2018-10-02 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Perceptual optimization for model-based video encoding
US10097851B2 (en) 2014-03-10 2018-10-09 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Perceptual optimization for model-based video encoding
US10210252B2 (en) 2007-06-18 2019-02-19 Gracenote, Inc. Method and apparatus for multi-dimensional content search and video identification

Families Citing this family (126)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US6711278B1 (en) * 1998-09-10 2004-03-23 Microsoft Corporation Tracking semantic objects in vector image sequences
US6917692B1 (en) * 1999-05-25 2005-07-12 Thomson Licensing S.A. Kalman tracking of color objects
AU763919B2 (en) * 2000-03-16 2003-08-07 Canon Kabushiki Kaisha Tracking objects from video sequences
US7899243B2 (en) 2000-11-06 2011-03-01 Evryx Technologies, Inc. Image capture and identification system and process
US8218873B2 (en) * 2000-11-06 2012-07-10 Nant Holdings Ip, Llc Object information derived from object images
US7680324B2 (en) 2000-11-06 2010-03-16 Evryx Technologies, Inc. Use of image-derived information as search criteria for internet and other search engines
US9310892B2 (en) 2000-11-06 2016-04-12 Nant Holdings Ip, Llc Object information derived from object images
US8224078B2 (en) 2000-11-06 2012-07-17 Nant Holdings Ip, Llc Image capture and identification system and process
US7565008B2 (en) 2000-11-06 2009-07-21 Evryx Technologies, Inc. Data capture and identification system and process
US7003061B2 (en) * 2000-12-21 2006-02-21 Adobe Systems Incorporated Image extraction from complex scenes in digital video
US20020131643A1 (en) * 2001-03-13 2002-09-19 Fels Sol Sidney Local positioning system
AU2002318859B2 (en) * 2001-12-19 2004-11-25 Canon Kabushiki Kaisha A Method for Video Object Detection and Tracking Based on 3D Segment Displacement
US20040204127A1 (en) * 2002-06-24 2004-10-14 Forlines Clifton L. Method for rendering with composited images on cellular telephones
US7179171B2 (en) * 2002-06-24 2007-02-20 Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. Fish breeding toy for cellular telephones
US7085420B2 (en) * 2002-06-28 2006-08-01 Microsoft Corporation Text detection in continuous tone image segments
US7072512B2 (en) * 2002-07-23 2006-07-04 Microsoft Corporation Segmentation of digital video and images into continuous tone and palettized regions
AU2003220946A1 (en) * 2003-03-28 2004-10-25 National Institute Of Information And Communications Technology, Independent Administrative Agency Image processing method and image processing device
CA2440015A1 (en) * 2003-09-03 2005-03-03 National Research Council Of Canada Second order change detection in video
JP4461937B2 (en) * 2003-09-30 2010-05-12 セイコーエプソン株式会社 Generation of high-resolution images based on multiple low-resolution images
US6942152B1 (en) * 2004-01-21 2005-09-13 The Code Corporation Versatile graphical code reader that is configured for efficient decoding
WO2006132650A2 (en) * 2004-07-28 2006-12-14 Sarnoff Corporation Method and apparatus for improved video surveillance through classification of detected objects
JP4928451B2 (en) * 2004-07-30 2012-05-09 ユークリッド・ディスカバリーズ・エルエルシー Apparatus and method for processing video data
US7457472B2 (en) * 2005-03-31 2008-11-25 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Apparatus and method for processing video data
US7508990B2 (en) * 2004-07-30 2009-03-24 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Apparatus and method for processing video data
US7457435B2 (en) * 2004-11-17 2008-11-25 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Apparatus and method for processing video data
US7436981B2 (en) * 2005-01-28 2008-10-14 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Apparatus and method for processing video data
AU2005286786B2 (en) * 2004-09-21 2010-02-11 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Apparatus and method for processing video data
JP2008521347A (en) * 2004-11-17 2008-06-19 ユークリッド・ディスカバリーズ・エルエルシー Apparatus and method for processing video data
FR2880717A1 (en) * 2005-01-07 2006-07-14 Thomson Licensing Sa Video image spatio-temporal segmentation method for e.g. analyzing video image, involves performing fusion/scission of spatial area as per percentages of pixels of spatial area temporal area of interest
KR20070107722A (en) * 2005-01-28 2007-11-07 유클리드 디스커버리스, 엘엘씨 Apparatus and method for processing video data
AU2006230545B2 (en) * 2005-03-31 2010-10-28 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Apparatus and method for processing video data
US20070011718A1 (en) * 2005-07-08 2007-01-11 Nee Patrick W Jr Efficient customized media creation through pre-encoding of common elements
US8107748B2 (en) 2005-09-16 2012-01-31 Sony Corporation Adaptive motion search range
US7596243B2 (en) 2005-09-16 2009-09-29 Sony Corporation Extracting a moving object boundary
US7957466B2 (en) 2005-09-16 2011-06-07 Sony Corporation Adaptive area of influence filter for moving object boundaries
US8165205B2 (en) * 2005-09-16 2012-04-24 Sony Corporation Natural shaped regions for motion compensation
US8005308B2 (en) 2005-09-16 2011-08-23 Sony Corporation Adaptive motion estimation for temporal prediction filter over irregular motion vector samples
US7885335B2 (en) 2005-09-16 2011-02-08 Sont Corporation Variable shape motion estimation in video sequence
US8059719B2 (en) * 2005-09-16 2011-11-15 Sony Corporation Adaptive area of influence filter
US7894522B2 (en) 2005-09-16 2011-02-22 Sony Corporation Classified filtering for temporal prediction
US7620108B2 (en) 2005-09-16 2009-11-17 Sony Corporation Integrated spatial-temporal prediction
US7894527B2 (en) 2005-09-16 2011-02-22 Sony Corporation Multi-stage linked process for adaptive motion vector sampling in video compression
US7835542B2 (en) * 2005-12-29 2010-11-16 Industrial Technology Research Institute Object tracking systems and methods utilizing compressed-domain motion-based segmentation
US7783118B2 (en) * 2006-07-13 2010-08-24 Seiko Epson Corporation Method and apparatus for determining motion in images
US7835544B2 (en) * 2006-08-31 2010-11-16 Avago Technologies General Ip (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. Method and system for far field image absolute navigation sensing
CN101573982B (en) * 2006-11-03 2011-08-03 三星电子株式会社 Method and apparatus for encoding/decoding image using motion vector tracking
KR101356734B1 (en) * 2007-01-03 2014-02-05 삼성전자주식회사 Method and apparatus for video encoding, and method and apparatus for video decoding using motion vector tracking
CN101622652B (en) 2007-02-08 2012-03-21 行为识别系统公司 Behavioral recognition system
US7929762B2 (en) * 2007-03-12 2011-04-19 Jeffrey Kimball Tidd Determining edgeless areas in a digital image
US7756296B2 (en) * 2007-03-27 2010-07-13 Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. Method for tracking objects in videos using forward and backward tracking
US8189905B2 (en) 2007-07-11 2012-05-29 Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. Cognitive model for a machine-learning engine in a video analysis system
US7899804B2 (en) * 2007-08-30 2011-03-01 Yahoo! Inc. Automatic extraction of semantics from text information
US8175333B2 (en) * 2007-09-27 2012-05-08 Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. Estimator identifier component for behavioral recognition system
US8300924B2 (en) * 2007-09-27 2012-10-30 Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. Tracker component for behavioral recognition system
US8200011B2 (en) * 2007-09-27 2012-06-12 Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. Context processor for video analysis system
US8208552B2 (en) * 2008-01-25 2012-06-26 Mediatek Inc. Method, video encoder, and integrated circuit for detecting non-rigid body motion
US8086037B2 (en) * 2008-02-15 2011-12-27 Microsoft Corporation Tiling and merging framework for segmenting large images
US9251423B2 (en) * 2008-03-21 2016-02-02 Intel Corporation Estimating motion of an event captured using a digital video camera
US9256789B2 (en) * 2008-03-21 2016-02-09 Intel Corporation Estimating motion of an event captured using a digital video camera
US8803966B2 (en) 2008-04-24 2014-08-12 GM Global Technology Operations LLC Clear path detection using an example-based approach
US8917904B2 (en) 2008-04-24 2014-12-23 GM Global Technology Operations LLC Vehicle clear path detection
US8249366B2 (en) * 2008-06-16 2012-08-21 Microsoft Corporation Multi-label multi-instance learning for image classification
US9633275B2 (en) * 2008-09-11 2017-04-25 Wesley Kenneth Cobb Pixel-level based micro-feature extraction
US9373055B2 (en) * 2008-12-16 2016-06-21 Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. Hierarchical sudden illumination change detection using radiance consistency within a spatial neighborhood
US8611590B2 (en) * 2008-12-23 2013-12-17 Canon Kabushiki Kaisha Video object fragmentation detection and management
US8285046B2 (en) * 2009-02-18 2012-10-09 Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. Adaptive update of background pixel thresholds using sudden illumination change detection
US8175376B2 (en) * 2009-03-09 2012-05-08 Xerox Corporation Framework for image thumbnailing based on visual similarity
US8537219B2 (en) 2009-03-19 2013-09-17 International Business Machines Corporation Identifying spatial locations of events within video image data
US8553778B2 (en) 2009-03-19 2013-10-08 International Business Machines Corporation Coding scheme for identifying spatial locations of events within video image data
US8411319B2 (en) * 2009-03-30 2013-04-02 Sharp Laboratories Of America, Inc. Methods and systems for concurrent rendering of graphic-list elements
US8416296B2 (en) * 2009-04-14 2013-04-09 Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. Mapper component for multiple art networks in a video analysis system
GB0907870D0 (en) * 2009-05-07 2009-06-24 Univ Catholique Louvain Systems and methods for the autonomous production of videos from multi-sensored data
US8442309B2 (en) * 2009-06-04 2013-05-14 Honda Motor Co., Ltd. Semantic scene segmentation using random multinomial logit (RML)
JP5335574B2 (en) * 2009-06-18 2013-11-06 キヤノン株式会社 Image processing apparatus and control method thereof
JP2011040993A (en) * 2009-08-11 2011-02-24 Nikon Corp Subject homing program and camera
US8340352B2 (en) * 2009-08-18 2012-12-25 Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. Inter-trajectory anomaly detection using adaptive voting experts in a video surveillance system
US8379085B2 (en) * 2009-08-18 2013-02-19 Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. Intra-trajectory anomaly detection using adaptive voting experts in a video surveillance system
US8280153B2 (en) * 2009-08-18 2012-10-02 Behavioral Recognition Systems Visualizing and updating learned trajectories in video surveillance systems
US8295591B2 (en) * 2009-08-18 2012-10-23 Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. Adaptive voting experts for incremental segmentation of sequences with prediction in a video surveillance system
US8493409B2 (en) * 2009-08-18 2013-07-23 Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. Visualizing and updating sequences and segments in a video surveillance system
US8625884B2 (en) * 2009-08-18 2014-01-07 Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. Visualizing and updating learned event maps in surveillance systems
US8358834B2 (en) 2009-08-18 2013-01-22 Behavioral Recognition Systems Background model for complex and dynamic scenes
US20110043689A1 (en) * 2009-08-18 2011-02-24 Wesley Kenneth Cobb Field-of-view change detection
US9805271B2 (en) 2009-08-18 2017-10-31 Omni Ai, Inc. Scene preset identification using quadtree decomposition analysis
US8270733B2 (en) * 2009-08-31 2012-09-18 Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. Identifying anomalous object types during classification
US8797405B2 (en) * 2009-08-31 2014-08-05 Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. Visualizing and updating classifications in a video surveillance system
US8270732B2 (en) * 2009-08-31 2012-09-18 Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. Clustering nodes in a self-organizing map using an adaptive resonance theory network
US8786702B2 (en) * 2009-08-31 2014-07-22 Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. Visualizing and updating long-term memory percepts in a video surveillance system
US8285060B2 (en) * 2009-08-31 2012-10-09 Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. Detecting anomalous trajectories in a video surveillance system
US8167430B2 (en) * 2009-08-31 2012-05-01 Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. Unsupervised learning of temporal anomalies for a video surveillance system
US8218818B2 (en) * 2009-09-01 2012-07-10 Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. Foreground object tracking
US8218819B2 (en) * 2009-09-01 2012-07-10 Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. Foreground object detection in a video surveillance system
US8170283B2 (en) * 2009-09-17 2012-05-01 Behavioral Recognition Systems Inc. Video surveillance system configured to analyze complex behaviors using alternating layers of clustering and sequencing
US8180105B2 (en) 2009-09-17 2012-05-15 Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. Classifier anomalies for observed behaviors in a video surveillance system
US8406472B2 (en) * 2010-03-16 2013-03-26 Sony Corporation Method and system for processing image data
US9053562B1 (en) * 2010-06-24 2015-06-09 Gregory S. Rabin Two dimensional to three dimensional moving image converter
US9132352B1 (en) 2010-06-24 2015-09-15 Gregory S. Rabin Interactive system and method for rendering an object
CN103106648B (en) * 2011-11-11 2016-04-06 株式会社理光 Determine the method and apparatus of view field in image
IN2014DN08349A (en) 2012-03-15 2015-05-08 Behavioral Recognition Sys Inc
US9317908B2 (en) 2012-06-29 2016-04-19 Behavioral Recognition System, Inc. Automatic gain control filter in a video analysis system
US9113143B2 (en) 2012-06-29 2015-08-18 Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. Detecting and responding to an out-of-focus camera in a video analytics system
US9111353B2 (en) 2012-06-29 2015-08-18 Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. Adaptive illuminance filter in a video analysis system
US9723271B2 (en) 2012-06-29 2017-08-01 Omni Ai, Inc. Anomalous stationary object detection and reporting
US9911043B2 (en) 2012-06-29 2018-03-06 Omni Ai, Inc. Anomalous object interaction detection and reporting
BR112014032832A2 (en) 2012-06-29 2017-06-27 Behavioral Recognition Sys Inc unsupervised learning of function anomalies for a video surveillance system
BR112015003444A2 (en) 2012-08-20 2017-07-04 Behavioral Recognition Sys Inc method and system for detecting oil on sea surface
DE102012020778B4 (en) 2012-10-23 2018-01-18 Audi Ag Method of tagging a sequence of images taken in time sequence with integrated quality control
CN104823444A (en) 2012-11-12 2015-08-05 行为识别系统公司 Image stabilization techniques for video surveillance systems
CN105637519A (en) 2013-08-09 2016-06-01 行为识别系统公司 Cognitive information security using a behavior recognition system
CN105321188A (en) * 2014-08-04 2016-02-10 江南大学 Foreground probability based target tracking method
US10409910B2 (en) 2014-12-12 2019-09-10 Omni Ai, Inc. Perceptual associative memory for a neuro-linguistic behavior recognition system
US10409909B2 (en) 2014-12-12 2019-09-10 Omni Ai, Inc. Lexical analyzer for a neuro-linguistic behavior recognition system
US10019657B2 (en) * 2015-05-28 2018-07-10 Adobe Systems Incorporated Joint depth estimation and semantic segmentation from a single image
US10346996B2 (en) 2015-08-21 2019-07-09 Adobe Inc. Image depth inference from semantic labels
KR101709085B1 (en) * 2015-12-16 2017-02-23 서강대학교산학협력단 Shot Boundary Detection method and apparatus using Convolutional Neural Networks
US10229324B2 (en) 2015-12-24 2019-03-12 Intel Corporation Video summarization using semantic information
US10853661B2 (en) 2016-04-06 2020-12-01 Intellective Ai, Inc. Methods and systems for optimized selection of data features for a neuro-linguistic cognitive artificial intelligence system
US10303984B2 (en) 2016-05-17 2019-05-28 Intel Corporation Visual search and retrieval using semantic information
US10313686B2 (en) * 2016-09-20 2019-06-04 Gopro, Inc. Apparatus and methods for compressing video content using adaptive projection selection
US10134154B2 (en) * 2016-12-30 2018-11-20 Google Llc Selective dynamic color management for user interface components of a media player
CN110869926B (en) * 2017-11-07 2024-01-19 谷歌有限责任公司 Sensor tracking and updating based on semantic state
US20200226763A1 (en) * 2019-01-13 2020-07-16 Augentix Inc. Object Detection Method and Computing System Thereof
CN110751066B (en) * 2019-09-30 2023-04-07 武汉工程大学 Image state identification method, device and equipment based on semantic segmentation model
US10970855B1 (en) 2020-03-05 2021-04-06 International Business Machines Corporation Memory-efficient video tracking in real-time using direction vectors
WO2022154342A1 (en) * 2021-01-12 2022-07-21 Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Methods and electronic device for processing image
WO2022271517A1 (en) * 2021-06-23 2022-12-29 Op Solutions, Llc Systems and methods for organizing and searching a video database

Citations (91)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US4783833A (en) 1985-11-27 1988-11-08 Hitachi, Ltd. Method of extracting an image of a moving object
US5034986A (en) 1989-03-01 1991-07-23 Siemens Aktiengesellschaft Method for detecting and tracking moving objects in a digital image sequence having a stationary background
WO1991011782A1 (en) 1990-01-23 1991-08-08 David Sarnoff Research Center, Inc. Three-frame technique for analyzing two motions in successive image frames dynamically
US5043919A (en) 1988-12-19 1991-08-27 International Business Machines Corporation Method of and system for updating a display unit
EP0474307A2 (en) 1990-09-07 1992-03-11 Philips Electronics Uk Limited Tracking a moving object
US5103305A (en) 1989-09-27 1992-04-07 Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba Moving object detecting system
US5103306A (en) 1990-03-28 1992-04-07 Transitions Research Corporation Digital image compression employing a resolution gradient
US5117287A (en) 1990-03-02 1992-05-26 Kokusai Denshin Denwa Co., Ltd. Hybrid coding system for moving image
US5136659A (en) 1987-06-30 1992-08-04 Kokusai Denshin Denwa Kabushiki Kaisha Intelligent coding system for picture signal
US5148497A (en) 1990-02-14 1992-09-15 Massachusetts Institute Of Technology Fractal-based image compression and interpolation
US5175808A (en) 1989-09-12 1992-12-29 Pixar Method and apparatus for non-affine image warping
US5214504A (en) 1990-01-31 1993-05-25 Fujitsu Limited Moving video image estimation system
US5258836A (en) 1991-05-08 1993-11-02 Nec Corporation Encoding of motion picture signal
US5259040A (en) 1991-10-04 1993-11-02 David Sarnoff Research Center, Inc. Method for determining sensor motion and scene structure and image processing system therefor
US5266941A (en) 1991-02-15 1993-11-30 Silicon Graphics, Inc. Apparatus and method for controlling storage of display information in a computer system
US5274453A (en) 1990-09-03 1993-12-28 Canon Kabushiki Kaisha Image processing system
EP0579319A2 (en) 1992-07-16 1994-01-19 Philips Electronics Uk Limited Tracking moving objects
US5295201A (en) 1992-01-21 1994-03-15 Nec Corporation Arrangement of encoding motion image signals using motion compensation and orthogonal transformation
US5329311A (en) 1993-05-11 1994-07-12 The University Of British Columbia System for determining noise content of a video signal in the disclosure
EP0614318A2 (en) 1993-03-04 1994-09-07 Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba Video encoder, video decoder, and video motion estimation apparatus
EP0625853A2 (en) 1993-05-21 1994-11-23 Nippon Telegraph And Telephone Corporation Moving image encoder and decoder
US5376971A (en) 1992-09-30 1994-12-27 Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. Picture encoding apparatus and picture decoding apparatus
US5471535A (en) 1991-09-18 1995-11-28 Institute For Personalized Information Environment Method for detecting a contour of a given subject to be separated from images and apparatus for separating a given subject from images
US5517327A (en) 1993-06-30 1996-05-14 Minolta Camera Kabushiki Kaisha Data processor for image data using orthogonal transformation
US5524068A (en) 1992-08-21 1996-06-04 United Parcel Service Of America, Inc. Method and apparatus for finding areas of interest in images
US5546129A (en) 1995-04-29 1996-08-13 Daewoo Electronics Co., Ltd. Method for encoding a video signal using feature point based motion estimation
US5557684A (en) 1993-03-15 1996-09-17 Massachusetts Institute Of Technology System for encoding image data into multiple layers representing regions of coherent motion and associated motion parameters
US5572258A (en) 1993-09-28 1996-11-05 Nec Corporation Motion compensation estimating device and method achieving improved motion compensation
US5577131A (en) 1993-05-05 1996-11-19 U.S. Philips Corporation Device for segmenting textured images and image segmentation system comprising such a device
US5581308A (en) 1995-03-18 1996-12-03 Daewoo Electronics Co., Ltd. Method and apparatus for determining true motion vectors for selected pixels
US5586200A (en) 1994-01-07 1996-12-17 Panasonic Technologies, Inc. Segmentation based image compression system
US5594504A (en) 1994-07-06 1997-01-14 Lucent Technologies Inc. Predictive video coding using a motion vector updating routine
US5598216A (en) 1995-03-20 1997-01-28 Daewoo Electronics Co., Ltd Method and apparatus for encoding/decoding a video signal
WO1997005746A2 (en) 1995-08-02 1997-02-13 Philips Electronics N.V. Method and system for coding an image sequence, corresponding coded signal and storage medium, and method and system for decoding such a coded signal
US5612743A (en) 1995-04-29 1997-03-18 Daewoo Electronics Co. Ltd. Method for encoding a video signal using feature point based motion estimation
US5619281A (en) 1994-12-30 1997-04-08 Daewoo Electronics Co., Ltd Method and apparatus for detecting motion vectors in a frame decimating video encoder
US5627591A (en) 1995-08-08 1997-05-06 Daewoo Electronics Co. Ltd. Image processing system using a pixel-by-pixel motion estimation based on feature points
US5654771A (en) 1995-05-23 1997-08-05 The University Of Rochester Video compression system using a dense motion vector field and a triangular patch mesh overlay model
US5666434A (en) 1994-04-29 1997-09-09 Arch Development Corporation Computer-aided method for image feature analysis and diagnosis in mammography
US5668608A (en) 1995-07-26 1997-09-16 Daewoo Electronics Co., Ltd. Motion vector estimation method and apparatus for use in an image signal encoding system
US5673339A (en) 1995-03-20 1997-09-30 Daewoo Electronics Co., Ltd. Method for encoding a video signal using feature point based motion estimation
US5684886A (en) 1991-09-17 1997-11-04 Fujitsu Limited, Kawasaki Moving body recognition apparatus
US5684509A (en) 1992-01-06 1997-11-04 Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd. Method and apparatus for processing image
US5692063A (en) 1996-01-19 1997-11-25 Microsoft Corporation Method and system for unrestricted motion estimation for video
US5694487A (en) 1995-03-20 1997-12-02 Daewoo Electronics Co., Ltd. Method and apparatus for determining feature points
US5706417A (en) 1992-05-27 1998-01-06 Massachusetts Institute Of Technology Layered representation for image coding
US5717463A (en) 1995-07-24 1998-02-10 Motorola, Inc. Method and system for estimating motion within a video sequence
US5731836A (en) 1995-09-22 1998-03-24 Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Method of video encoding by accumulated error processing and encoder therefor
US5731849A (en) 1992-03-13 1998-03-24 Canon Kabushiki Kaisha Movement vector detecting apparatus
US5734737A (en) 1995-04-10 1998-03-31 Daewoo Electronics Co., Ltd. Method for segmenting and estimating a moving object motion using a hierarchy of motion models
US5748789A (en) 1996-10-31 1998-05-05 Microsoft Corporation Transparent block skipping in object-based video coding systems
US5761341A (en) 1994-10-28 1998-06-02 Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. Image encoding and decoding method and apparatus using edge synthesis and inverse wavelet transform
US5761326A (en) 1993-12-08 1998-06-02 Minnesota Mining And Manufacturing Company Method and apparatus for machine vision classification and tracking
US5764814A (en) 1996-03-22 1998-06-09 Microsoft Corporation Representation and encoding of general arbitrary shapes
US5764805A (en) 1995-10-25 1998-06-09 David Sarnoff Research Center, Inc. Low bit rate video encoder using overlapping block motion compensation and zerotree wavelet coding
US5778098A (en) 1996-03-22 1998-07-07 Microsoft Corporation Sprite coding
US5784175A (en) 1995-10-05 1998-07-21 Microsoft Corporation Pixel block correlation process
US5802220A (en) 1995-12-15 1998-09-01 Xerox Corporation Apparatus and method for tracking facial motion through a sequence of images
US5809161A (en) 1992-03-20 1998-09-15 Commonwealth Scientific And Industrial Research Organisation Vehicle monitoring system
US5864630A (en) 1996-11-20 1999-01-26 At&T Corp Multi-modal method for locating objects in images
US5912991A (en) 1997-02-07 1999-06-15 Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Contour encoding method using error bands
US5923365A (en) 1993-10-12 1999-07-13 Orad Hi-Tech Systems, Ltd Sports event video manipulating system for highlighting movement
US5946043A (en) 1997-12-31 1999-08-31 Microsoft Corporation Video coding using adaptive coding of block parameters for coded/uncoded blocks
US5978497A (en) 1994-09-20 1999-11-02 Neopath, Inc. Apparatus for the identification of free-lying cells
US5982909A (en) 1996-04-23 1999-11-09 Eastman Kodak Company Method for region tracking in an image sequence using a two-dimensional mesh
US6005625A (en) 1994-08-22 1999-12-21 Nec Corporation Method and system for processing data on motion pictures by motion compensation combined with image segmentation
US6005493A (en) 1996-09-20 1999-12-21 Hitachi, Ltd. Method of displaying moving object for enabling identification of its moving route display system using the same, and program recording medium therefor
US6011596A (en) 1991-05-24 2000-01-04 British Broadcasting Video image motion compensation using an algorithm involving at least two fields
US6037988A (en) 1996-03-22 2000-03-14 Microsoft Corp Method for generating sprites for object-based coding sytems using masks and rounding average
US6075875A (en) 1996-09-30 2000-06-13 Microsoft Corporation Segmentation of image features using hierarchical analysis of multi-valued image data and weighted averaging of segmentation results
US6097854A (en) 1997-08-01 2000-08-01 Microsoft Corporation Image mosaic construction system and apparatus with patch-based alignment, global block adjustment and pair-wise motion-based local warping
US6188777B1 (en) 1997-08-01 2001-02-13 Interval Research Corporation Method and apparatus for personnel detection and tracking
US6226407B1 (en) 1998-03-18 2001-05-01 Microsoft Corporation Method and apparatus for analyzing computer screens
US20010048753A1 (en) * 1998-04-02 2001-12-06 Ming-Chieh Lee Semantic video object segmentation and tracking
US6421738B1 (en) 1997-07-15 2002-07-16 Microsoft Corporation Method and system for capturing and encoding full-screen video graphics
US20020176624A1 (en) 1997-07-28 2002-11-28 Physical Optics Corporation Method of isomorphic singular manifold projection still/video imagery compression
US20030044045A1 (en) * 2001-06-04 2003-03-06 University Of Washington Video object tracking by estimating and subtracting background
US20030072479A1 (en) * 2001-09-17 2003-04-17 Virtualscopics System and method for quantitative assessment of cancers and their change over time
US6573915B1 (en) 1999-12-08 2003-06-03 International Business Machines Corporation Efficient capture of computer screens
US20030165254A1 (en) * 2002-02-15 2003-09-04 International Business Machines Corporation Adapting point geometry for storing address density
US6650705B1 (en) 2000-05-26 2003-11-18 Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories Inc. Method for encoding and transcoding multiple video objects with variable temporal resolution
US6654419B1 (en) 2000-04-28 2003-11-25 Sun Microsystems, Inc. Block-based, adaptive, lossless video coder
US6711278B1 (en) 1998-09-10 2004-03-23 Microsoft Corporation Tracking semantic objects in vector image sequences
US6721454B1 (en) * 1998-10-09 2004-04-13 Sharp Laboratories Of America, Inc. Method for automatic extraction of semantically significant events from video
US6728317B1 (en) 1996-01-30 2004-04-27 Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation Moving image compression quality enhancement using displacement filters with negative lobes
US20040228530A1 (en) * 2003-05-12 2004-11-18 Stuart Schwartz Method and apparatus for foreground segmentation of video sequences
US20040234136A1 (en) * 2003-03-24 2004-11-25 Ying Zhu System and method for vehicle detection and tracking
US20050074140A1 (en) * 2000-08-31 2005-04-07 Grasso Donald P. Sensor and imaging system
US20050105768A1 (en) * 2001-09-19 2005-05-19 Guang-Zhong Yang Manipulation of image data
US6904759B2 (en) * 2002-12-23 2005-06-14 Carrier Corporation Lubricant still and reservoir for refrigeration system
US6959104B2 (en) * 2001-02-05 2005-10-25 National Instruments Corporation System and method for scanning a region using a low discrepancy sequence

Family Cites Families (1)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US6904159B2 (en) * 2001-12-20 2005-06-07 Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. Identifying moving objects in a video using volume growing and change detection masks

Patent Citations (97)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US4783833A (en) 1985-11-27 1988-11-08 Hitachi, Ltd. Method of extracting an image of a moving object
US5136659A (en) 1987-06-30 1992-08-04 Kokusai Denshin Denwa Kabushiki Kaisha Intelligent coding system for picture signal
US5043919A (en) 1988-12-19 1991-08-27 International Business Machines Corporation Method of and system for updating a display unit
US5034986A (en) 1989-03-01 1991-07-23 Siemens Aktiengesellschaft Method for detecting and tracking moving objects in a digital image sequence having a stationary background
US5175808A (en) 1989-09-12 1992-12-29 Pixar Method and apparatus for non-affine image warping
US5103305A (en) 1989-09-27 1992-04-07 Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba Moving object detecting system
WO1991011782A1 (en) 1990-01-23 1991-08-08 David Sarnoff Research Center, Inc. Three-frame technique for analyzing two motions in successive image frames dynamically
US5214504A (en) 1990-01-31 1993-05-25 Fujitsu Limited Moving video image estimation system
US5148497A (en) 1990-02-14 1992-09-15 Massachusetts Institute Of Technology Fractal-based image compression and interpolation
US5117287A (en) 1990-03-02 1992-05-26 Kokusai Denshin Denwa Co., Ltd. Hybrid coding system for moving image
US5103306A (en) 1990-03-28 1992-04-07 Transitions Research Corporation Digital image compression employing a resolution gradient
US5274453A (en) 1990-09-03 1993-12-28 Canon Kabushiki Kaisha Image processing system
EP0474307A2 (en) 1990-09-07 1992-03-11 Philips Electronics Uk Limited Tracking a moving object
US5266941A (en) 1991-02-15 1993-11-30 Silicon Graphics, Inc. Apparatus and method for controlling storage of display information in a computer system
US5394170A (en) 1991-02-15 1995-02-28 Silicon Graphics, Inc. Apparatus and method for controlling storage of display information in a computer system
US5258836A (en) 1991-05-08 1993-11-02 Nec Corporation Encoding of motion picture signal
US6011596A (en) 1991-05-24 2000-01-04 British Broadcasting Video image motion compensation using an algorithm involving at least two fields
US5684886A (en) 1991-09-17 1997-11-04 Fujitsu Limited, Kawasaki Moving body recognition apparatus
US5471535A (en) 1991-09-18 1995-11-28 Institute For Personalized Information Environment Method for detecting a contour of a given subject to be separated from images and apparatus for separating a given subject from images
US5259040A (en) 1991-10-04 1993-11-02 David Sarnoff Research Center, Inc. Method for determining sensor motion and scene structure and image processing system therefor
US5684509A (en) 1992-01-06 1997-11-04 Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd. Method and apparatus for processing image
US5295201A (en) 1992-01-21 1994-03-15 Nec Corporation Arrangement of encoding motion image signals using motion compensation and orthogonal transformation
US5731849A (en) 1992-03-13 1998-03-24 Canon Kabushiki Kaisha Movement vector detecting apparatus
US5809161A (en) 1992-03-20 1998-09-15 Commonwealth Scientific And Industrial Research Organisation Vehicle monitoring system
US5706417A (en) 1992-05-27 1998-01-06 Massachusetts Institute Of Technology Layered representation for image coding
EP0579319A2 (en) 1992-07-16 1994-01-19 Philips Electronics Uk Limited Tracking moving objects
US5524068A (en) 1992-08-21 1996-06-04 United Parcel Service Of America, Inc. Method and apparatus for finding areas of interest in images
US5376971A (en) 1992-09-30 1994-12-27 Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. Picture encoding apparatus and picture decoding apparatus
EP0614318A2 (en) 1993-03-04 1994-09-07 Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba Video encoder, video decoder, and video motion estimation apparatus
US5557684A (en) 1993-03-15 1996-09-17 Massachusetts Institute Of Technology System for encoding image data into multiple layers representing regions of coherent motion and associated motion parameters
US5577131A (en) 1993-05-05 1996-11-19 U.S. Philips Corporation Device for segmenting textured images and image segmentation system comprising such a device
US5329311A (en) 1993-05-11 1994-07-12 The University Of British Columbia System for determining noise content of a video signal in the disclosure
EP0625853A2 (en) 1993-05-21 1994-11-23 Nippon Telegraph And Telephone Corporation Moving image encoder and decoder
US5598215A (en) 1993-05-21 1997-01-28 Nippon Telegraph And Telephone Corporation Moving image encoder and decoder using contour extraction
US5517327A (en) 1993-06-30 1996-05-14 Minolta Camera Kabushiki Kaisha Data processor for image data using orthogonal transformation
US5572258A (en) 1993-09-28 1996-11-05 Nec Corporation Motion compensation estimating device and method achieving improved motion compensation
US5923365A (en) 1993-10-12 1999-07-13 Orad Hi-Tech Systems, Ltd Sports event video manipulating system for highlighting movement
US5761326A (en) 1993-12-08 1998-06-02 Minnesota Mining And Manufacturing Company Method and apparatus for machine vision classification and tracking
US5586200A (en) 1994-01-07 1996-12-17 Panasonic Technologies, Inc. Segmentation based image compression system
US5666434A (en) 1994-04-29 1997-09-09 Arch Development Corporation Computer-aided method for image feature analysis and diagnosis in mammography
US5594504A (en) 1994-07-06 1997-01-14 Lucent Technologies Inc. Predictive video coding using a motion vector updating routine
US6005625A (en) 1994-08-22 1999-12-21 Nec Corporation Method and system for processing data on motion pictures by motion compensation combined with image segmentation
US5978497A (en) 1994-09-20 1999-11-02 Neopath, Inc. Apparatus for the identification of free-lying cells
US5761341A (en) 1994-10-28 1998-06-02 Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. Image encoding and decoding method and apparatus using edge synthesis and inverse wavelet transform
US5619281A (en) 1994-12-30 1997-04-08 Daewoo Electronics Co., Ltd Method and apparatus for detecting motion vectors in a frame decimating video encoder
US5581308A (en) 1995-03-18 1996-12-03 Daewoo Electronics Co., Ltd. Method and apparatus for determining true motion vectors for selected pixels
US5694487A (en) 1995-03-20 1997-12-02 Daewoo Electronics Co., Ltd. Method and apparatus for determining feature points
US5598216A (en) 1995-03-20 1997-01-28 Daewoo Electronics Co., Ltd Method and apparatus for encoding/decoding a video signal
US5673339A (en) 1995-03-20 1997-09-30 Daewoo Electronics Co., Ltd. Method for encoding a video signal using feature point based motion estimation
US5734737A (en) 1995-04-10 1998-03-31 Daewoo Electronics Co., Ltd. Method for segmenting and estimating a moving object motion using a hierarchy of motion models
US5612743A (en) 1995-04-29 1997-03-18 Daewoo Electronics Co. Ltd. Method for encoding a video signal using feature point based motion estimation
US5546129A (en) 1995-04-29 1996-08-13 Daewoo Electronics Co., Ltd. Method for encoding a video signal using feature point based motion estimation
US5654771A (en) 1995-05-23 1997-08-05 The University Of Rochester Video compression system using a dense motion vector field and a triangular patch mesh overlay model
US5717463A (en) 1995-07-24 1998-02-10 Motorola, Inc. Method and system for estimating motion within a video sequence
US5668608A (en) 1995-07-26 1997-09-16 Daewoo Electronics Co., Ltd. Motion vector estimation method and apparatus for use in an image signal encoding system
WO1997005746A2 (en) 1995-08-02 1997-02-13 Philips Electronics N.V. Method and system for coding an image sequence, corresponding coded signal and storage medium, and method and system for decoding such a coded signal
US5627591A (en) 1995-08-08 1997-05-06 Daewoo Electronics Co. Ltd. Image processing system using a pixel-by-pixel motion estimation based on feature points
US5731836A (en) 1995-09-22 1998-03-24 Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Method of video encoding by accumulated error processing and encoder therefor
US6026182A (en) 1995-10-05 2000-02-15 Microsoft Corporation Feature segmentation
US5784175A (en) 1995-10-05 1998-07-21 Microsoft Corporation Pixel block correlation process
US5764805A (en) 1995-10-25 1998-06-09 David Sarnoff Research Center, Inc. Low bit rate video encoder using overlapping block motion compensation and zerotree wavelet coding
US5802220A (en) 1995-12-15 1998-09-01 Xerox Corporation Apparatus and method for tracking facial motion through a sequence of images
US5692063A (en) 1996-01-19 1997-11-25 Microsoft Corporation Method and system for unrestricted motion estimation for video
US6728317B1 (en) 1996-01-30 2004-04-27 Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation Moving image compression quality enhancement using displacement filters with negative lobes
US5946419A (en) 1996-03-22 1999-08-31 Microsoft Corporation Separate shape and texture coding of transparency data for video coding applications
US5778098A (en) 1996-03-22 1998-07-07 Microsoft Corporation Sprite coding
US5764814A (en) 1996-03-22 1998-06-09 Microsoft Corporation Representation and encoding of general arbitrary shapes
US6037988A (en) 1996-03-22 2000-03-14 Microsoft Corp Method for generating sprites for object-based coding sytems using masks and rounding average
US5982909A (en) 1996-04-23 1999-11-09 Eastman Kodak Company Method for region tracking in an image sequence using a two-dimensional mesh
US6005493A (en) 1996-09-20 1999-12-21 Hitachi, Ltd. Method of displaying moving object for enabling identification of its moving route display system using the same, and program recording medium therefor
US6075875A (en) 1996-09-30 2000-06-13 Microsoft Corporation Segmentation of image features using hierarchical analysis of multi-valued image data and weighted averaging of segmentation results
US5748789A (en) 1996-10-31 1998-05-05 Microsoft Corporation Transparent block skipping in object-based video coding systems
US5864630A (en) 1996-11-20 1999-01-26 At&T Corp Multi-modal method for locating objects in images
US5912991A (en) 1997-02-07 1999-06-15 Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Contour encoding method using error bands
US6421738B1 (en) 1997-07-15 2002-07-16 Microsoft Corporation Method and system for capturing and encoding full-screen video graphics
US20020176624A1 (en) 1997-07-28 2002-11-28 Physical Optics Corporation Method of isomorphic singular manifold projection still/video imagery compression
US6097854A (en) 1997-08-01 2000-08-01 Microsoft Corporation Image mosaic construction system and apparatus with patch-based alignment, global block adjustment and pair-wise motion-based local warping
US6188777B1 (en) 1997-08-01 2001-02-13 Interval Research Corporation Method and apparatus for personnel detection and tracking
US5946043A (en) 1997-12-31 1999-08-31 Microsoft Corporation Video coding using adaptive coding of block parameters for coded/uncoded blocks
US6226407B1 (en) 1998-03-18 2001-05-01 Microsoft Corporation Method and apparatus for analyzing computer screens
US6400831B2 (en) * 1998-04-02 2002-06-04 Microsoft Corporation Semantic video object segmentation and tracking
US20010048753A1 (en) * 1998-04-02 2001-12-06 Ming-Chieh Lee Semantic video object segmentation and tracking
US6711278B1 (en) 1998-09-10 2004-03-23 Microsoft Corporation Tracking semantic objects in vector image sequences
US6721454B1 (en) * 1998-10-09 2004-04-13 Sharp Laboratories Of America, Inc. Method for automatic extraction of semantically significant events from video
US6573915B1 (en) 1999-12-08 2003-06-03 International Business Machines Corporation Efficient capture of computer screens
US6654419B1 (en) 2000-04-28 2003-11-25 Sun Microsystems, Inc. Block-based, adaptive, lossless video coder
US6650705B1 (en) 2000-05-26 2003-11-18 Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories Inc. Method for encoding and transcoding multiple video objects with variable temporal resolution
US20050074140A1 (en) * 2000-08-31 2005-04-07 Grasso Donald P. Sensor and imaging system
US6959104B2 (en) * 2001-02-05 2005-10-25 National Instruments Corporation System and method for scanning a region using a low discrepancy sequence
US6870945B2 (en) * 2001-06-04 2005-03-22 University Of Washington Video object tracking by estimating and subtracting background
US20030044045A1 (en) * 2001-06-04 2003-03-06 University Of Washington Video object tracking by estimating and subtracting background
US20030072479A1 (en) * 2001-09-17 2003-04-17 Virtualscopics System and method for quantitative assessment of cancers and their change over time
US20050105768A1 (en) * 2001-09-19 2005-05-19 Guang-Zhong Yang Manipulation of image data
US20030165254A1 (en) * 2002-02-15 2003-09-04 International Business Machines Corporation Adapting point geometry for storing address density
US6904759B2 (en) * 2002-12-23 2005-06-14 Carrier Corporation Lubricant still and reservoir for refrigeration system
US20040234136A1 (en) * 2003-03-24 2004-11-25 Ying Zhu System and method for vehicle detection and tracking
US20040228530A1 (en) * 2003-05-12 2004-11-18 Stuart Schwartz Method and apparatus for foreground segmentation of video sequences

Non-Patent Citations (99)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Title
"Video Coding for Low Bitrate Communication," Draft Recommendation H.263, International Telecommunication Union, 51 pp. (Dec. 1995).
Adiv, "Determining Three-Dimensional Motion and Structure From Optical Flow Generated By Several Moving Objects," IEEE Trans. on PAMI, vol. 7, pp. 384-401 (1985).
Aggarwal et al., "Corresponding Processes in Dynamic Scene Analysis," Proc. IEEE, vol. 69, No. 5, pp. 562-572 (1981).
Ayer et al., "Segmentation of Moving Objects by Robust Motion Parameter Estimation Over Multiple Frame," Proc. 3 European Conference on Computer Vision, Stockholm, Sweden, pp. 316-327 (1994).
Biggar et al., "Segmented Video Coding",IEEE Int. Conf on Acoustics, Speech and Sig. Proc., ICASSP-88, New York, pp. 1108-1111 (Apr. 1988).
Black, "Combining Intensity and Motion for Incremental Segmentation and Tracking Over Long Image Sequences," ECCV'92, pp. 485-493, Santa Margherita, Italy (May 1992).
Bonnaud et al., "Multiple Occluding Object Tracking Using a Non-Redundant Boundary-Based Representation," ICIP 97, pp. 426-429 (Oct. 1997).
Bouthemy et al., "Motion Segmentation and Qualitative Dynamic Scene Analysis from An Image Sequence," Intl. Journal of Computer Vision, vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 157-182 (1993).
Brady et al., "Computationally Efficient Estimation of Polynomial Model-based Motion," Proceedings of Picture Coding Symposium 1996, Melbourn (Mar. 1996).
Brady et al., "Object Detection and Tracking Using an Em-Based Motion Estimation and Segmentation Framework," ICIP'96, vol. 1, pp. 925-928, Lausanne, Switzerland (Sep. 1996).
Burt et al., "Segmentation and Estimation of Image Region Properties Through Cooperative Hierarchical Computation," IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, vol. SMC-11, No. 12, pp. 802-809 (Dec. 1981).
Canny, "A Computational Approach to Edge Detection," IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. PAMI-8, No. 6, pp. 679-698 (Nov. 1986).
Chang et al., "Next Generation Content Representation, Creation, and Searching for New-Media Applications in Education," Proc. IEEE, vol. 86, No. 5, pp. 884-904 (1998).
Chang et al., "Transform Coding of Arbitrarily-Shaped Image Segments," Proceedings of the ACM Multimedia 93, pp. 83-90, (Aug. 1, 1993).
Chen et al., "A Block Transform Coder for Arbitrarily Shaped Image Segments," ICIP-94, vol. I/III, pp. 85-89 (Nov. 13, 1994).
Chen et al., "Image Segmentation as an Estimation Problem," Computer Graphics and Image Processing, vol. 12, pp. 153-172 (1980).
Cover et al., "Nearest Neighbor Pattern Classification," IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. IT-13, pp. 21-27 (1967).
Crisman, "Color Region Tracking for Vehicle Guidance," Active Vision, Blake and Yuille ed., MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 107-120 (1992).
Curwen et al., "Dynamic Contours: Real-time Active Splines," Active Vision, Blake and Yuille ed., MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 39-58 (1992).
Deriche et al., "Tracking Line Segments,"ECCV'90, pp. 259-268 (1990).
Dickmanns, "Expectation-based Dynamic Scene Understanding," Active Vision, Blake and Yuille ed., MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 303-335 (1992).
Diehl, "Object-Oriented Motion Estimation and Segmentation In Image Sequences," Signal Processing Image Communication, vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 23-56 (1991).
Fogg, "Image and Video Compression," SPIE-The International Society for Optical Engineering Proceedings, vol. 2186 (1994).
Foley et al., "Computer Graphics Principles and Practice," Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., pp. 835-851 (1990).
Franke et al., "Constrained Iterative Restoration Techniques: A Powerful Tool in Region Oriented Texture Coding," Signal Processing IV: Theories and Applications, pp. 1145-1148 (Sep. 1988).
Gill et al., "Creating High-Quality Content with Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 7," 4 pp. (2000). [Downloaded from the World Wide Web on May 1, 2002.].
Goh et al., "Model-Based Multi-Resolution Motion Estimation in Noisy Images," CVGIP: Image Understanding, vol. 59, No. 3, pp. 307-319 (1994).
Gordon, "On the Tracking of Featureless Objects with Occlusion," IEEE Workshop on Visual Motion, Irving, pp. 13-20 (1989).
Gu et al., "Morphological Moving Object Segmentation and Tracking for Content-Based Video Coding," International Symposium on Multimedia Communication and Video Coding, New York, Plenum Press (Oct. 11-13, 1995).
Gu et al., "Semantic Video Object Tracking Using Region-Based Classification," Proc. of IPCIP '98 Int'l Conf. on Image Processing, Chicago, IL, pp. 643-647 (Oct. 1998).
Gu et al., "Semiautomatic Segmentation and Tracking of Semantic Video Objects," IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, vol. 8, No. 5, pp. 572-584 (Sep. 1998).
Gu et al., "Tracking of Multiple Semantic Video Objects for Internet Applications," Part of IS&T/SPIE Conf. on Visual Comm. and Image Processing '99, San Jose, CA, pp. 806-820 (Jan. 1999).
Gu, "3D Contour Image Coding Based on Morphological Filters and Motion Estimation,"0 ICASSP94, pp. 277-280 (1994).
Gu, "Combined Gray-Level and Motion Segmentation for Very Low Bit-Rate Coding," SPIE, vol. 2451, pp. 121-129 (Mar. 20, 1995).
Gu, "Multivalued Morphology and Segmentation-Based Coding," Ph.D. dissertation, LTS/-EPFL, http://-ltswww.-epfi.-ch.- Staff/gu.html, (1995).
Guo et al., "Tracking of Human Body Motion Based on a Stick Figure Model," Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation, vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 1-9 (1994).
Haddad et al., "Digital Signal Processing, Theory, Applications, and Hardware," pp. 257-261 (1991).
Haralick et al., "Image Segmentation Techniques," Computer Vision, Graphics and Image Processing, vol. 29, pp. 100-132 (1985).
Harris, "Tracking and Rigid Models," Active Vision, Blake and Yuille ed., MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 59-74 (1992).
Horowitz et al., "Picture Segmentation By a Tree Traversal Algorithm," J. ACM, vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 368-388 (1976).
Hötter, Optimization and Efficiency of an Object-Oriented Analysis-Synthesis Coder,IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, No. 2, pp. 181-194 (Apr. 4, 1994).
International Organization for Standardisation ISO/IEC JTCI/SC29/WG11, Information Technology-Coding of Audio-Visual Objects: Visual, "Preprocessing and Postprocessing," ISO/IEC 14496-2, pp. 303-308 (May 28, 1998).
International Organization for Standardisation ISO/IEC JTCI/SC29/WG11, Information Technology-Coding of Audio-Visual Objects: Visual, ISO/IEC 14496-2, pp. 159-311, (May 28, 1998).
International Organization for Standardisation ISO/IEC JTCI/SC29/WG11, Information Technology-Coding of Audio-Visual Objects: Visual, ISO/IEC 14496-2, pp. 183-190, (May 28, 1998).
International Organization for Standardization ISO/IEC JTCI/SC29/WG11, N2459, "Overview of the MPEG-4 Standard," (Oct. 1998).
Irani et al., "Detecting and Tracking Multiple Moving Objects Using Temporal Integration," In Proc. 2<SUP>nd</SUP>European Conference on Computer Vision, pp. 282-287 (1992).
Irani et al., "Video Indexing Based on Mosaic Representations," IEEE, vol. 86, No. 5, pp. 905-921 (May 1998).
ISO, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 MPEG 97/N1642, "MPEG-4 Video Verification Model Version 7.0 3. Encoder Definition," pp. 1, 17-122 Bristol (Apr. 1997).
Kass et al., "Snakes: Active Contour Models," Proc. Int'l. Conference Computer Vision, London, pp. 259-268 (1987).
Kunt et al., "Second Generation Image-Coding Techniques," Proceedings of IEEE, vol. 73, No. 4 (1985).
LaCall, "MPEG: A Video Compression Standard for Multimedia Applications," Communications of the ACM, vol. 34, No. 4, pp. 47-58 (Apr. 1991).
Lee et al., "A Layered Video Object Coding System Using Sprite and Affine Motion Model," IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, vol. 7, No. 1 (Feb. 1997).
Legters et al., "A Mathematical Model for Computer Image Tracking," IEEE Trans. On Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 4, No. 6, pp. 583-594 (1982).
Li et al., "Optimal Linear Interpolation Coding for Server-Based Computing," Proc. IEEE Int'l Conf. on Communications, 5 pp. (Apr.-May 2002).
Marqués et al., "Object Tracking for Content-Based Functionalities," SPIE, vol. 3024, pp. 190-199 (1997).
Marr, "Vision," W.H. Freeman, New York, Chapter 4, pp. 268-294 (1982).
Matthias, "An Overview of Microsoft Windows Media Screen Technology," 3 pp. (2000). [Downloaded from the World Wide Web on May 1, 2002.].
Meyer et al., "Region-Based Tracking in an Image Sequence," Signal Processing: Image Communications, vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 476-484 (Oct. 1989).
Meyer et al., "Region-Based Tracking Using Affine Motion Models in Long Image Sequences," CVGIP: Image Understanding, vol. 60, No. 2, pp. 119-140 (Sep. 1994).
Meyer, "Color Image Segmentation," 4<SUP>th</SUP>International Conference on Image Processing and its Applications, pp. 303-306 (May 1992).
Mitiche et al., "Computation and Analysis of Image Motion: A Synopsis of Current Problems and Methods," Intl. Journal of Computer Vision, vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 29-55 (1996).
Moscheni et al., "Object Tracking Based on Temporal and Spatial Information," ICASSP 96, pp. 1914-1917 (May 1996).
Murray et al., "Scene Segmentation From Visual Motion Using Global Optimization," IEEE Trans. On Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 220-228 (1987).
Mussman et al., "Object-Oriented Analysis-Synthesis Coding of Moving Images," Signal Processing: Image Communications, vol. 1, pp. 117-138 (1989).
Nagel et al., "Motion Boundary Detection In Image Sequences by Local Stochastic Tests," In 3 Proc. European Conference on Computer Vision, Stockholm, pp. 305-315 (1994).
Nicolas et al., "Global Motion Identification For Image Sequence Analysis and Coding," Proc. ICASSP, Toronto, pp. 2825-2828 (1992).
Nieweglowski et al., "A Novel Video Coding Scheme Based on Temporal Prediction Using Digital Image Warping," IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 141-150 (Aug. 1993).
Odobez et al., "Robust Multiresolution Estimation of Parametric Motion Models," J. Visual Communication and Image Representation, vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 248-265 (1995).
OPTX International, "New Screen Watch(TM) 4.0 Click and Stream(TM) Wizard From OPTX International Makes Workplace Communication Effortless," 1 p., document marked Sep. 24, 2001 [downloaded from the World Wide Web on Sep. 22, 2005].
OPTX International, "OPTX Improves Technology-Based Training with Screen Watch(TM) 3.0. Versatile Screen Capture Software Adds High Color and Live Webcast Support," 1 p., document marked Feb. 15, 2001 [downloaded from the World Wide Web on Sep. 22, 2005].
OPTX International, "OPTX International Marks One Year Anniversary of Screen Watch With Release of New 2.0 Version," 1 p., document marked May 16, 2000 [downloaded from the World Wide Web on Sep. 22, 2005].
Orchard, "Predictive Motion-Field Segmentation for Image Sequence Coding," IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 54-70 (Feb. 1993).
Ozer, "Why MPEG is Hot," PC Magazine, pp. 130-131 (Apr. 11, 1995).
Palmer et al., "Shared Desktop: A Collaborative Tool for Sharing 3-D Applications Among Different Window Systems," Digital Tech. Journal, v. 9, No. 3, pp. 42-29 (1997).
Pennebaker et al., "JPEG Still Image Data Compression Standard," Chapter 20, pp. 325-349 (1993).
Pipitone et al., "Tripod operators for recognizing objects in range images: rapid rejection of library objects," Proceedings of the 1992 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (May 1992).
Rao, "Data Association Methods for Tracking Systems," Active Vision, Blake and Yuille ed., MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 91-106 (1992).
Rogmone, "Identifying Multiplel Motions from Optical Flow," In Proc. 2 European Conference On Computer Vision, pp. 258-266 (1992).
Rui et al., "Digital Image/Video Library and MPEG-7: Standardization and Research Issues," ICASSP '98, Seattle, (May 1998).
Salembier et al., "Region-Based Video Coding Using Mathematical Morphology," Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 83, No. 6, pp. 843-857 (Jun. 1995).
Salembier et al., "Segmentation-Based Video Coding System Allowing the Manipulation of Objects," IEEE Transactions on the Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 60-73 (Feb. 1997).
Sanson, "Motion Affine Models Identification and Application to Television Image Coding," SPIE Visual Communications and Image Processing '91: Visual Communications, vol. 1605, pp. 570-581 (Nov. 11, 1991).
Schaar-Mitrea et al., "Hybrid Compression of Video with Graphics in DTV Communication Systems," IEEE Trans. on Consumer Electronics, pp. 1007-17 (2000).
Schalkoff et al., "A Model and Tracking Algorithm for a Class of Video Targets," IEEE Trans. On Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 2-10 (1982).
Seferidis et al., "General Apporoach to Block-Matching Motion Estimation," Optical Engineering, vol. 32, No. 7, pp. 1464-1474 (Jul. 1993).
Sethi et al., "Finding Trajectories of Feature Points in a Monocular Image Sequence," IEEE Trans. On PAMI, vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 56-73 (1987).
Terzopoulos et al., "Tracking Nonrigid 3D Objects," Active Vision, Blake and Yuille ed., MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 75-90 (1992).
Terzopoulos et al., "Tracking with Kalman Snakes," Active Vision, Blake and Yullie ed., MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 3-20 (1992).
Thompson et al., "Detecting Moving Objects," Intl. Journal of Computer Vision, vol. 4, pp. 39-57 (1990).
Toklu et al., "Simultaneous Alpha Map Generation and 2-D Mesh Tracking for Multimedia Applications," ICIP 97, pp. 113-116 (Oct. 1997).
Torr et al., "Statistical Detection of Independent Movement From a Moving Camera," J. Image and Vision Computing, vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 180-187 (1993).
Ueda et al., "Tracking Moving Contours Using Energy Minimizing Elastic Contour Models," Computer Vision ECCV'92, Springer Verlag, vol. 588, pp. 453-457 (1992).
Wang et al., "Representing Moving Images With Layers," IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, vol. 3, No. 5, pp. 625-637 (Sep. 1994).
Wu et al., "A Gradient-Based Method for General Motion Estimation and Segmentation," J. Visual Communication and Image Representation, vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 25-38 (1993).
Wu et al., "Spatio-Temporal Segmentation of Image Sequences for Object-Oriented Low Bit-Rate Image Coding," Signal Processing: Image Communication 8, vol. 8, No. 6, pp. 513-543 (1996).
Yao et al., "Tracking a Dynamic Set of Feature Points," IEEE Trans. On Image Processing, vol. 4, No. 10, pp. 1382-1395 (1995).
Yuille et al., "Deformable Templates," Active Vision, Blake and Yuille ed., MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 21-38 (1992).
Zakhor et al., "Edge-Based 3-D Camera Motion Estimation with Application to Video Coding," IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, vol. 2, pp. 481-498 (Oct. 2, 1993).
Zhong et al., "AMOS: An Active System for MPEG-4 Video Object Segmentation," ICIP'98, Chicago, vol. 2, pp. 647-651 (1998).

Cited By (55)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US20100002929A1 (en) * 2004-05-13 2010-01-07 The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. Image-based methods for measuring global nuclear patterns as epigenetic markers of cell differentiation
US8189900B2 (en) 2004-05-13 2012-05-29 Tha Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. Image-based methods for measuring global nuclear patterns as epigenetic markers of cell differentiation
US7907769B2 (en) 2004-05-13 2011-03-15 The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. Image-based methods for measuring global nuclear patterns as epigenetic markers of cell differentiation
US9743078B2 (en) 2004-07-30 2017-08-22 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Standards-compliant model-based video encoding and decoding
US9532069B2 (en) 2004-07-30 2016-12-27 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Video compression repository and model reuse
US8902971B2 (en) 2004-07-30 2014-12-02 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Video compression repository and model reuse
US20070206028A1 (en) * 2004-12-23 2007-09-06 Apple Inc. Manipulating text and graphic appearance
US7460129B2 (en) * 2004-12-23 2008-12-02 Apple Inc. Manipulating text and graphic appearance
US20060148426A1 (en) * 2004-12-31 2006-07-06 Meng-Hsi Chuang Mobile communication device capable of changing its user interface
US9578345B2 (en) 2005-03-31 2017-02-21 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Model-based video encoding and decoding
US8908766B2 (en) 2005-03-31 2014-12-09 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Computer method and apparatus for processing image data
US8964835B2 (en) 2005-03-31 2015-02-24 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Feature-based video compression
US8942283B2 (en) 2005-03-31 2015-01-27 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Feature-based hybrid video codec comparing compression efficiency of encodings
US20110182352A1 (en) * 2005-03-31 2011-07-28 Pace Charles P Feature-Based Video Compression
US9106977B2 (en) 2006-06-08 2015-08-11 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Object archival systems and methods
US8036423B2 (en) * 2006-10-11 2011-10-11 Avago Technologies General Ip (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. Contrast-based technique to reduce artifacts in wavelength-encoded images
US20080089605A1 (en) * 2006-10-11 2008-04-17 Richard Haven Contrast-based technique to reduce artifacts in wavelength-encoded images
US8553782B2 (en) 2007-01-23 2013-10-08 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Object archival systems and methods
US8243118B2 (en) 2007-01-23 2012-08-14 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Systems and methods for providing personal video services
US20100073458A1 (en) * 2007-01-23 2010-03-25 Pace Charles P Systems and methods for providing personal video services
US8842154B2 (en) 2007-01-23 2014-09-23 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Systems and methods for providing personal video services
US20100086062A1 (en) * 2007-01-23 2010-04-08 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Object archival systems and methods
US20080232712A1 (en) * 2007-03-23 2008-09-25 Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. Image composer for composing an image by extracting a partial region not common to plural images
US20080310742A1 (en) * 2007-06-15 2008-12-18 Physical Optics Corporation Apparatus and method employing pre-ATR-based real-time compression and video frame segmentation
US8798148B2 (en) 2007-06-15 2014-08-05 Physical Optics Corporation Apparatus and method employing pre-ATR-based real-time compression and video frame segmentation
US11288314B2 (en) 2007-06-18 2022-03-29 Roku, Inc. Method and apparatus for multi-dimensional content search and video identification
US11288313B2 (en) 2007-06-18 2022-03-29 Roku, Inc. Method and apparatus for multi-dimensional content search and video identification
US11288312B2 (en) 2007-06-18 2022-03-29 Roku, Inc. Method and apparatus for multi-dimensional content search and video identification
US10210252B2 (en) 2007-06-18 2019-02-19 Gracenote, Inc. Method and apparatus for multi-dimensional content search and video identification
US11803591B2 (en) 2007-06-18 2023-10-31 Roku, Inc. Method and apparatus for multi-dimensional content search and video identification
US11126654B1 (en) 2007-06-18 2021-09-21 Roku, Inc. Method and apparatus for multi-dimensional content search and video identification
US10977307B2 (en) 2007-06-18 2021-04-13 Gracenote, Inc. Method and apparatus for multi-dimensional content search and video identification
US11281718B2 (en) 2007-06-18 2022-03-22 Roku, Inc. Method and apparatus for multi-dimensional content search and video identification
US20090116728A1 (en) * 2007-11-07 2009-05-07 Agrawal Amit K Method and System for Locating and Picking Objects Using Active Illumination
US7983487B2 (en) * 2007-11-07 2011-07-19 Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. Method and system for locating and picking objects using active illumination
US8570393B2 (en) 2007-11-30 2013-10-29 Cognex Corporation System and method for processing image data relative to a focus of attention within the overall image
US20110211726A1 (en) * 2007-11-30 2011-09-01 Cognex Corporation System and method for processing image data relative to a focus of attention within the overall image
US20100296572A1 (en) * 2007-12-11 2010-11-25 Kumar Ramaswamy Methods and systems for transcoding within the distributiion chain
US8718363B2 (en) 2008-01-16 2014-05-06 The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. Systems and methods for analyzing image data using adaptive neighborhooding
US8737703B2 (en) 2008-01-16 2014-05-27 The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. Systems and methods for detecting retinal abnormalities
US8457443B2 (en) 2008-02-26 2013-06-04 Cyberlink Corp. Method for handling static text and logos in stabilized images
US20090214078A1 (en) * 2008-02-26 2009-08-27 Chia-Chen Kuo Method for Handling Static Text and Logos in Stabilized Images
US8121409B2 (en) * 2008-02-26 2012-02-21 Cyberlink Corp. Method for handling static text and logos in stabilized images
US9189670B2 (en) 2009-02-11 2015-11-17 Cognex Corporation System and method for capturing and detecting symbology features and parameters
US20100200660A1 (en) * 2009-02-11 2010-08-12 Cognex Corporation System and method for capturing and detecting symbology features and parameters
US8605942B2 (en) * 2009-02-26 2013-12-10 Nikon Corporation Subject tracking apparatus, imaging apparatus and subject tracking method
US20100232646A1 (en) * 2009-02-26 2010-09-16 Nikon Corporation Subject tracking apparatus, imaging apparatus and subject tracking method
US9607202B2 (en) 2009-12-17 2017-03-28 University of Pittsburgh—of the Commonwealth System of Higher Education Methods of generating trophectoderm and neurectoderm from human embryonic stem cells
US20110188728A1 (en) * 2009-12-17 2011-08-04 The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. Methods of generating trophectoderm and neurectoderm from human embryonic stem cells
US8830182B1 (en) 2010-02-09 2014-09-09 Google Inc. Keystroke resolution
US8179370B1 (en) 2010-02-09 2012-05-15 Google Inc. Proximity based keystroke resolution
US8751872B2 (en) 2011-05-27 2014-06-10 Microsoft Corporation Separation of error information from error propagation information
US10097851B2 (en) 2014-03-10 2018-10-09 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Perceptual optimization for model-based video encoding
US10091507B2 (en) 2014-03-10 2018-10-02 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Perceptual optimization for model-based video encoding
US9621917B2 (en) 2014-03-10 2017-04-11 Euclid Discoveries, Llc Continuous block tracking for temporal prediction in video encoding

Also Published As

Publication number Publication date
EP1519589A2 (en) 2005-03-30
EP1519589A3 (en) 2010-12-08
EP1112661B1 (en) 2004-12-29
JP2002525735A (en) 2002-08-13
EP1112661A1 (en) 2001-07-04
US7162055B2 (en) 2007-01-09
ATE286337T1 (en) 2005-01-15
US20040189863A1 (en) 2004-09-30
DE69922973T2 (en) 2005-05-19
JP4074062B2 (en) 2008-04-09
US20050240629A1 (en) 2005-10-27
DE69922973D1 (en) 2005-02-03
US6711278B1 (en) 2004-03-23
WO2000016563A1 (en) 2000-03-23

Similar Documents

Publication Publication Date Title
US7088845B2 (en) Region extraction in vector images
US7302096B2 (en) Method and apparatus for low depth of field image segmentation
US6453069B1 (en) Method of extracting image from input image using reference image
US7453939B2 (en) Automatic video object extraction
US5557684A (en) System for encoding image data into multiple layers representing regions of coherent motion and associated motion parameters
US6912313B2 (en) Image background replacement method
CN100538743C (en) Understand video content by the real-time video motion analysis
US20080037869A1 (en) Method and Apparatus for Determining Motion in Images
US20020176625A1 (en) Method for segmenting multi-resolution video objects
Venkatesh et al. Efficient object-based video inpainting
US20100128789A1 (en) Method and apparatus for processing video sequences
JP2005513656A (en) Method for identifying moving objects in a video using volume growth and change detection masks
Ianasi et al. A fast algorithm for background tracking in video surveillance, using nonparametric kernel density estimation
CN110599518B (en) Target tracking method based on visual saliency and super-pixel segmentation and condition number blocking
Giaccone et al. Motion-compensated multichannel noise reduction of color film sequences
Wei et al. Automatic video object segmentation for MPEG-4
Minetto et al. Reliable detection of camera motion based on weighted optical flow fitting.
Kim et al. Restoration of regions occluded by a caption in TV scene
Akhter et al. Super-Trajectories: A Compact Yet Rich Video Representation
Zhang Dense correspondence estimation, image set compression and image retargeting quality assessment
Tweed et al. Moving Object Graphs and Layer Extraction from Image Sequences.
Akhlaghian Tab Multiresolution scalable image and video segmentation
Lecumberry et al. Semi-automatic object tracking in video sequences
Ramírez-Manzanares et al. A variational approach for multi-valued velocity field estimation in transparent sequences
Porikli Video object segmentation

Legal Events

Date Code Title Description
FEPP Fee payment procedure

Free format text: PAYOR NUMBER ASSIGNED (ORIGINAL EVENT CODE: ASPN); ENTITY STATUS OF PATENT OWNER: LARGE ENTITY

FPAY Fee payment

Year of fee payment: 4

FPAY Fee payment

Year of fee payment: 8

AS Assignment

Owner name: MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC, WASHINGTON

Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNOR:MICROSOFT CORPORATION;REEL/FRAME:034541/0477

Effective date: 20141014

FEPP Fee payment procedure

Free format text: MAINTENANCE FEE REMINDER MAILED (ORIGINAL EVENT CODE: REM.)

LAPS Lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees

Free format text: PATENT EXPIRED FOR FAILURE TO PAY MAINTENANCE FEES (ORIGINAL EVENT CODE: EXP.); ENTITY STATUS OF PATENT OWNER: LARGE ENTITY

STCH Information on status: patent discontinuation

Free format text: PATENT EXPIRED DUE TO NONPAYMENT OF MAINTENANCE FEES UNDER 37 CFR 1.362

FP Lapsed due to failure to pay maintenance fee

Effective date: 20180808